How can traditional companies without Internet products rely on self-media channels to acquire customers?

China's Internet has been developing for nearly 30 years, from a major change every 10 years to a turning point every 5 years and now to a trend every one or two years. This speed is enough to divide it into the traditional Internet and the new Internet era.

Taking content operation as an example, the traditional content operation theory is PGC and UGC: portal websites and community forums such as Sohu, Sina , Zhihu, and Tieba are typical content products; and with the increasing homogeneity of products in the Internet industry, some non-content products have also begun to pay attention to content operation, such as e-commerce platforms such as Tmall and JD.com , and 020 products such as Ele.me. For these non-content products, their content operations are mainly based on static "content presentation" and dynamic "content recommendation". The so-called content presentation is mostly to deliver the information that users care about most to users in a labeled form as soon as possible, while content recommendation is to recommend content that users are interested in to help them make decisions, thereby reducing users' decision-making costs.

Regardless of whether they are content-based products or non-content-based products, their content operations are all carried out around the company's own apps or web pages. However, with the prevalence of the "Internet +" concept, more and more traditional companies are beginning to catch the Internet train. However, the vast majority of traditional companies do not have their own apps, or there is no need to design an app specifically. In this case, self-media becomes their best ticket to get on this train.

So today, let’s talk about how traditional companies that don’t have Internet products can rely on self-media channels to acquire their own “customers”. I used the word "customer" instead of "user" here because unlike Internet products, which mostly seek to monetize after accumulating a sufficient user base by providing free services to users, most traditional companies focus on paying customers. Their main purpose of relying on self-media is to use it as a publicity and promotion channel to attract customers to buy their products.

The two core links to achieve the goal of acquiring customers are nothing more than: attracting new customers and converting them . To achieve these two goals, the self-media operators mainly rely on the following two operating methods: reaching users through content and attracting users through activities.

1. Content reaches users

Content output is a long-term, gradual process and is our long-term work. There are many benefits to creating content, such as maintaining old users and converting them into paying users . And with more and more content distribution platforms, it is becoming more and more convenient to attract new users through content.

In the era of WeChat public accounts , only users who followed us could see our content, which made it very difficult for us to reach new users through content. But now with the prevalence of self-media platforms such as NetEase and Toutiao , we have more content distribution channels and more opportunities to reach users we have never reached before.

Therefore, if you are currently operating self-media content, you must master the two skills of content production and distribution.

1.1 Content Production

If reaching users is a tough battle, then content is the munitions and fodder. "Before the troops move out, the food and fodder must go first." Whether this battle is fought successfully depends to a large extent on our logistical reserves. So how do we produce good content?

1.1.1 Determine the tonality

Tone is an issue that operators must think clearly about before officially starting content production. Generally speaking, the process of tone confirmation can be summarized as: giving personalization to self-media based on corporate brand characteristics. The so-called personification, in layman's terms, means making readers feel that they are communicating with a living person when reading your article, rather than a dead object or a machine. There are many types of personification. Depending on the corporate brand, the characteristics of the main business and the personalities of the operators, the personality of the self-media can be humorous, bohemian, serious (this is more difficult to please), caring and warm, etc. Regarding the construction of brand personality, I have previously written " Public Account Operation: How to Personalize Content and Realize Corporate Image Feedback?" 》, interested readers can click to review.

1.1.2 Material Type

After determining the tone, the next step is to consider what content to produce. In most cases, the tone of self-media also determines the scope of its later content production to a certain extent. For example, it is obviously inappropriate for a serious and earnest old cadre to post some entertainment gossip.

Generally speaking, the content materials we produce can be divided into seven major types.

• Regular content : content that is used in everyday situations. For example, if you are a travel-related self-media, your regular content can be the six major modules of travel: "food, accommodation, travel, shopping and entertainment".
• Public relations content : mainly refers to the company's featured products and industry honors. This type of content is an important part of corporate self-media, especially toB corporate self-media, mainly to endorse the company and gain user trust. But this requires a certain degree of control, and we must not let readers feel that we are doing awkward advertising. After all, no one likes to hear you brag or advertise. This kind of content actually tests the writing skills of the operators. Let’s take the mudslide in the corporate account world - Alipay WeChat Official Account as an example, let’s see how it writes public relations content articles.

Image from Alipay WeChat official account

As expected of Alipay, it is as unrestrained as ever. Such a serious and large-scale strategic cooperation was made laughable by his choice of pictures and text, but it achieved the ultimate purpose of the push: telling readers that Alibaba , Ant Financial and the Shanxi government have reached an in-depth cooperation without making readers feel bored.

• Hot topics : Combining current hot topics to publish explosive articles is a mainstream form used by many self-media nowadays. However, when choosing hot spots, we must pay attention to those that do not match our tone. If we pursue them, we will not be able to acquire effective users and will also affect the corporate image, it is better not to pursue them.
• Festivals: It is to produce content in combination with fixed holidays, such as writing about rice dumplings on the Dragon Boat Festival, writing about love on Valentine's Day , and writing about "You can live a good life alone" on Singles' Day. Some large companies can even create festivals artificially. For example, Tmall's Double Eleven is the most successful artificial festival.
• Season : Content related to seasonal changes or periodicity, such as the “Travel with Weibo” campaign that Weibo did every year.
• Ranking : refers to the content that is filtered out through certain specific rules. For example, "The top ten tourist destinations in the world you must visit", "The top ten workplace tips you must know", etc.
• Theme : This kind of theme we define often accompanies the activity.

1.1.3 Content Creation

One meter one hundred works

After selecting relevant content materials, the next step is to enter the creation stage. When creating, we can refer to a delicacy - "Mi Baizuo". As the name suggests, rice can be cooked in a hundred ways. Analogously to content creation, we can package the same content material into different forms, such as text, video, audio, and pictures.

Copywriting optimization

Nowadays, most self-media content is still in the form of text, so the optimization of copywriting is particularly important. The means to optimize copywriting can mainly be based on two perspectives: language and emotion.

Optimize the text from the language perspective:

• Make the copywriting language more concise by using the subject-verb-object structure as the main form and removing meaningless redundant words;
• Make good use of analogies and empathy (the premises you know may not be known to the readers) to make the copywriting language clearer;
• The words are reasonable and logical. Think about what you would most like to see after this sentence if you were a reader, so that the copywriting language is more fluent;
• All the language in the article serves a central point (general-specific-general), making the copywriting language more unified;
• Examine the text through a thinking framework to make the copywriting language more vivid and descriptive. The so-called thinking framework can be the most typical time, place, people, causes, processes, and results; it can also be taste, smell, touch, vision, and hearing to see whether the text touches the reader's perception; it can also be whether the article involves the dimensions of simplicity, surprise, concreteness, credibility, emotion, and story.

Optimize copy emotionally:

• Exceed user expectations and surprise them;
• The tragedy of comedy is at its core, giving the reader a greater sense of conquest and control;
• Emphasize the difference between the target group and other groups, so that readers have a greater sense of identity superiority;
• The reverse story of the little people gives readers a greater sense of hope;
• Exploitation of readers' negative emotions such as guilt and resentment.

In addition, let me talk about the working mode of our brain thinking during the creative process. Generally speaking, the brain's working modes can be divided into two categories: focused mode and divergent mode. When we are thinking about what article to write, we mainly rely on the divergent mode, while when we are doing the specific writing, the focused mode dominates.

From the perspective of external factors, coffee, tea and a quiet office environment can easily put us into focus mode, while alcohol, taking a walk or taking a bath can make our thoughts more divergent. You may want to give it a try.

1.2 Content Distribution

After creating the content, it is naturally meaningful to let more people see it, so content distribution is another core task of self-media content operation. In content distribution, we must make good use of the media matrix. Everyone knows that there are too many self-media distribution platforms now. In addition to the mainstream WeChat public accounts and Weibo, there are news platforms such as NetEase, Toutiao, Sohu self-media, etc., audio platforms such as Himalaya and Qingting FM, video platforms such as Youku and Tencent Video, and others such as Baidu Tieba, Penguin , Baijiahao , etc., which are really too numerous to list.

The media matrix is ​​actually a skillful multi-platform distribution. This skill is mainly reflected in the choice of platform and the packaging of content.

1.2.1 Platform Selection

In choosing a platform, we mainly follow two principles: user matching and head selection. User matching means that when choosing a platform, we must choose a platform that has a high degree of match with our target users . Taking me as an example, the content I output is mainly operational information , so "Everyone is a Product Manager " is definitely more suitable for me than Toutiao because its users are more precise.

Head selection means that we should choose the leading platform among similar platforms to cooperate with. Taking the example of my own articles, I occasionally have the habit of submitting articles to public accounts. There are quite a few operation-related public accounts now. Do I have to submit to them one by one? Of course not, it takes too much energy and the ROI is not high. The author only needs to choose authoritative top platforms to submit articles, such as Renrenshijiupujiu, Operation Uncle, and Mantou Business School . Then other second- and third-tier public accounts will naturally come to me to reprint them after seeing them. The same applies to corporate self-media when choosing a platform to join. If we achieve results on the top platforms, we can often obtain more resources if other platforms contact us proactively.

1.2.2 Content Packaging

The so-called content packaging means adapting to local customs. Users of each platform have their own characteristics. The content they are interested in, their browsing habits, and their preferred styles will be different. It is necessary for us to adjust the style of articles for different platforms.

The most typical and efficient adjustment is undoubtedly the title . In view of the browsing habits of users of different distribution channels , we can at least formulate different titles for the same article to cater to them. If we have the energy, it would be best to deeply optimize to the specific article style. However, one thing that needs to be noted is that from the perspective of our long-term brand, the author does not recommend the use of clickbait titles . If you choose a title that has nothing to do with the content in order to attract attention, it will only be counterproductive.

2. Activities attract users

In addition to using long-term, stable output of high-quality content to stimulate old users to convert and pay, and acquiring new users through distribution through other channels, another efficient way to acquire customers is of course events.

The natural form of activity to reach new users at events is joint activities. Similar to the choice of distribution platform, if we want to acquire effective new users through joint activities, the first factor we need to consider is the user matching degree of the cooperation platform, followed by traffic .

Because new users = traffic users * conversion rate . For example, if I am an enterprise focusing on K12 education, the two cooperation platforms I can choose now are: one is a children's book product with one million monthly active users, and the other is Momo with nearly 40 million monthly active users. Without a doubt, the former is what I should choose. Because a user who buys children's books is very likely to have children at home and pay more attention to their children's education, the conversion rate will definitely be considerable if we cooperate. However, for a social product like Momo that is mainly for single men and women, the possibility that its users have children and pay attention to their children's education is relatively much lower, and the conversion rate is likely to be close to zero. Therefore, the volume of Momo's traffic users is much larger than that of children's books, but once the conversion rate is multiplied, the final number of new users is unbearable to look at.

So what logic should we use to screen platforms with high user matching? My advice is: look for platforms to cooperate with on the same supply and demand chain. For example, the reason why eLong, where I used to work, chose to cooperate with Uber is because we belong to the same six major demand modules of tourism, namely "food, accommodation, travel, shopping and entertainment", and our target users are all business travelers, so we have a very high degree of match. Another example is the cooperation between maternal and infant food e-commerce and children's toy e-commerce, and they are also two companies on the same supply and demand chain.

In addition to joint activities that can reach a large number of new users, we can also rely on another type of highly contagious self-owned platform activities to attract new users - that is, SNS marketing activities . I mentioned this in my previous article “Three Dimensions of SNS Viral Marketing Activities: Browsers, Participants, and Sharers”: the human factors that need to be considered when planning SNS activities. You can review it, I won’t go into details here.

The above is what I shared with you about the ideas and methodologies for companies to acquire customers through self-media operations from the two dimensions of content reach and event attraction.

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media advertising

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