How did the 100,000+ posts on Toutiao, UC, and WeChat come about?

After a piece of content is produced, how to distribute it to various channels ?

Whether you are starting a content business or doing content business, you will inevitably consider having a source of water to supply the world and distribute it through multiple channels.

As a content producer, before distributing, you must first know the position of the channel or platform? Only by knowing both yourself and your enemy can you win every battle.

Last year I saw a WeChat public account called Guozi Xiaoxin, which actually has a very powerful background, from the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission. It made a short video , complaining about how the WeChat public account platform is very harsh on the operators of WeChat public accounts. Then they said, aren’t we WeChat users? Later, I told the people in the Guozi Xiaoxin public account that in the eyes of WeChat, you are of course users, but you must be a niche user. We know that there are 20 million WeChat public accounts, and many of them have died. Compared with the 700 million to 800 million WeChat users, this is of course a small number.

For WeChat, whose interests does it want to protect? It is definitely in the interests of the majority of ordinary users, not the interests of WeChat public account operators. As long as there are users, you will definitely come. If all the users run away, then you will definitely run away too, because there are no fish in the pond. Their position must be on the side of the user.

The channel has one characteristic: a large number of C-end users, massive endpoints, and B-end partners. It is the equivalent of holding hands with the two parties.

It must do some control and management on the B-side, which means effective handling of fragments in terms of our information channels.

Take Weibo as an example. In 2011, Weibo reached its peak. At that time, I was a well-known Weibo hacker. Because I think a very serious problem with Weibo at that time was that it could not handle information fragmentation well. From the user's perspective, I didn't get the information I wanted. You didn't show me what I wanted to see, and all you showed me all day long were things I had no interest in.

WeChat initially displayed all subscription accounts on the default panel, together with your conversations with friends. Later it put the subscription number into a small box. Users now need to take one more step to find a public account. This is to make users feel that information fragments are being processed, and information is being processed effectively, so that users feel that there are not too many fragments, or that fragments are tolerable.

Once this step was completed, he walked towards the platform. Weibo made a mistake in 2011, but slowly corrected it by 2013 or 2014. I think their efforts were good. At that time, many people commented that Weibo was dead. But I say, Weibo should be able to rebound.

As a primitive information channel, it must deal with information fragments. If fragmentation is not handled, all users will definitely leave. There are roughly two ways to process this information, and these two ways have also become the two main ways of dissemination for content producers.

A public relations statement often made by the platform is actually not true. "We can only make money if the content producers on our platform make money." This statement goes against business logic. When have you ever heard a casino say something like that?

The principle is exactly the same when it comes to information platforms. The profitability of the channel platform is not based on the profitability of each individual. Because if you stop doing it a year later, there will be another group of people like you who will do it, and there will always be people who will continue to do so.

In fact, when it comes to content production on the Internet, the history of self-media can be traced back to personal homepages, webmasters, blogs, and now Weibo and WeChat public accounts. There may be other things in the future, and this is a continuous process. Since you keep coming back, its benefits are not based on your making money. At most, there is a correlation between whether you make money and whether he makes money, but there is no causal relationship. Currently, most information platforms are losing money, but many people are making money here.

Let’s talk about the distribution characteristics of channels, which can be mainly divided into two categories: distribution through social media or distribution through algorithms .

The most obvious social distribution is through Weibo and WeChat.

We often encounter such a situation: a WeChat public account has only two or three thousand fans, but it may generate more than 100,000 or even millions of readings. In the famous Luo Yixiao incident, that article, according to them, had 90 million hits, but that account definitely did not have that many followers.

This picture shows the structure of social distribution. The most important six words are: no socializing, no reading . On Weibo, the relationship is based on mutual following, and the news spreads in waves. On WeChat, what we see is the circle of friends . Tencent Technology once issued a report saying that among the various functions of WeChat, the one most used by users is Moments, not Chat.

A very important point in social distribution, in my opinion, is that for a WeChat public account, the title has a much greater impact on the amount of dissemination than other platforms.

Secondly, its impact factor lies in who forwards it, and you can’t do anything about this, although it is very important. You may have this feeling when you use WeChat in your daily life. For the same article, I may not read it if Zhang San reposts it, but I will read it if Li Si reposts it, because the weight of Li Si in your mind is different from that of Zhang San.

I have summarized the following results for social distribution:

Result one, you can accumulate fans and subscribers, which is probably also the most important battlefield for accumulating fans and subscribers.

Result two: there is a chance of the article becoming a hit, but it is relatively low. Because it spreads, you have no way to control it.

Result three is that the platform lacks the ability to set the agenda, not that it does not have it. Weibo does exist, and it has certain agenda settings in topics and search boxes. WeChat didn’t do this before, but now it’s slowly becoming a thing and you can search for so-called hot posts in your circle of friends. It has this label, and that label is what technically provides as agenda setting.

Let’s take a look at the algorithm style, which is Toutiao , UC Headlines , a series of things from Tencent, including Yidian Zixun .

The three most important tags are:

Tag 1: Article tag. It is not typed by humans, but automatically typed by computers, the so-called artificial intelligence , the so-called deep learning of computers. It’s scary to type article tags. It’s not like when we write a paper in school and have to list five key words . An article definitely has more than five tags, maybe 500. Your article may only have 2,000 words, but it will give you 500 tags.

Label 2: Account label , which is the label of your account.

Label three: User label . Toutiao now claims to have nearly 100 million daily active users, and each of these users will be labeled.

Where we can work on this is article tags, account tags.

Let’s take a look at how several platforms judge these labels. For example, the tags on UC Headlines will affect the strength of its recommendations.

First, use deduplication to identify original content. In UC Headlines, a deduplication algorithm is used to determine whether your article is original.

Second, exclusivity is supported by the platform.

Third, depth. This is a very simple quantification, no less than 2,000 words.

If you meet all these three conditions, and you wrote it yourself, created it yourself, and posted it exclusively, you may have contributed it, or he may have asked you for a commission, and then you wrote a very long article, perhaps 2,000 words. Once these three labels are added, the possibility of you being recommended will be very high, and the strength of the recommendation will also be very high.

Penguin Media Platform is a particularly large matrix, including Tencent News , Tiantian Express , etc., and has several APPs. It pays more attention to hot words. Where to find hot words? It has nothing to do with Baidu. You should try your best to match the hot words of Sogou and Weibo, and sometimes even produce a batch of articles just for this hot word. For example, when I found this hot word on Sogou, I immediately started writing an article. But I don’t recommend that you include this hot word in the title when the hot word has no connection with your article, or the connection is very far-fetched. Once this is discovered, it will eventually affect the judgment of your account.

In addition to the original and exclusive content mentioned above, Toutiao also added an assessment of reading effectiveness. In Toutiao, the more popular an article is, the easier it is to become popular. It is easy for your article to get 500,000, 1 million, or even 5 million visits.

It will look at your click-through rate and your completion rate. That is to say, after the user clicks, does he/she scroll down to read the article completely? It depends on this thing, as well as the number of interactions with the article and the subscription behavior generated by the article. These four indicators constitute the indicators of the reading effect of your article. The better the reading effect of this article, the more it will be recommended, making your effect better.

On Toutiao, the rising curve of the number of views of an article becomes steeper as time goes on. The WeChat public account becomes slower as time goes by, which is a different point.

The following are personalized recommendation mechanisms for articles.

There are some things we don't need to pay attention to, and some we do need to pay attention to. For example, the similarity of the topics of the articles. Toutiao has always been proud of one thing: although their daily active users did not exceed Tencent last year, their usage time is higher than Tencent. What Toutiao is even more proud of this year is that its daily active users are higher than Tencent. This is Toutiao’s unilateral statement, and some data reports do not support this statement.

The reason why they can achieve such a long duration is because of similar topics. You have to capture the hot spots on this platform. However, WeChat public accounts do not have platform hotspots.

The second is the judgment on the account. For some, if an account is judged to be excellent, its content will be recommended first. Where social distribution and algorithmic distribution overlap is in the space of two things. We see that algorithmic distribution in account determination is a little bit like social distribution, and it also places more emphasis on content sources.

Since the second half of last year, my view has been that the battle of pictures and texts has ended. There may be some big ones popping up out of nowhere this year, but the overall pattern will not change. Next up is a short video.

Let me talk about the distribution of short videos. Basically, your short videos are not suitable for WeChat. Although many short videos are using WeChat public accounts, it will not subsidize you. If you want to make short videos, you should not choose a social distribution portal, at least you should not focus on WeChat, you should choose other platforms.

The two that are actually providing subsidies with real money are Toutiao and UC Toutiao. UC Toutiao recently launched the Big Fish Plan, and Toutiao is also working on it. When I met Zhang Yiming last year, I asked him, when will you end your illegal operations? I'm referring to the license for short videos. They have bought a Sunshine Media Company in Yuncheng, Shanxi, and are now operating legally.

Toutiao will definitely put a lot of effort into short videos. When we do things, we should think from the perspective of our opponents or partners. As mentioned before, the market for pictures and texts has basically ended. What this means is that, first, you will see that the pattern has basically been determined, and second, the growth rate of advertising has slowed down. It is impossible to rely solely on pictures and texts, so it will put a lot of effort into short videos.

Today we have a very popular platform for short videos, which is Kuaishou . Have you ever thought that Kuaishou is a short video company for third- and fourth-tier cities or even lower-tier cities? Is there a Kuaishou company in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou? I said that the Kuaishou platform in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou seems to be possible.

I would like to mention a short video platform here. You may pay attention to it. It may not subsidize you, but you should pay attention to its current overall operation status and the traffic of various videos on it. It turns out that it is not a platform, it is a self-made platform called Pear Video.

I agree that short videos are very good, but I don’t see what kind of content will go viral. It’s the same principle as when we write articles. We also write genre films. What kind of articles will become popular? Inspirational, health-preserving, and chicken soup-themed content will be popular. The video also talks about this.

So I think if we make short videos today, the first thing we need to see is that we have to go to places where there are subsidies. I really recommend everyone to go to Toutiao or UC Toutiao. If Yidian Zixun offers subsidies, you can also go. Why go to a subsidized platform? It is because you are likely to fail, your type is wrong or it does not hit the user's feelings, and people are not interested. It is of course OK if someone pays for you and covers your costs.

Second, as to what kind of films we make, I suggest that you observe the Pear Video platform. Everyone would think that posts with a bit of class and style like Yitiao and Ergeng would be more popular, but I tell you, that’s not the case. I think the reason why Yitie and Ergeng were so popular was because they were done early. If you rush in now and make something with a minimalist style, it won’t be popular.

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This article was compiled and published by @魏武辉(Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting! Site Map