Public account operation: How to attract the audience’s scarce attention amidst an overabundance of content?

Official accounts are the only traffic pool in the WeChat ecosystem that can retain users , and they have mature and efficient entrances and exits. Now we have entered the era of content entrepreneurship and content consumption. Good content is one of the magic weapons of public accounts and even the era of self-media . By analyzing the essence through phenomena, it is not difficult to find that the key factor in good content thinking is to have a deep insight into the changes, motivations and principles of the target audience.

Getting to know your audience: How to attract the scarce attention of your audience amidst the overabundance of content

In the past, we received information through mass media such as newspapers and television, and mass media mainly adopted the professionally produced content (PGC) model. With the development of the Internet, emerging Internet media have been accepted by users. After 2013, with the maturity and explosive development of mobile Internet technology, self-media such as mobile news clients, Weibo, WeChat , etc. officially entered our field of vision. With their characteristics of fast transmission speed, large space for speech, and strong interactivity, they have gradually become the first choice for users to obtain information. Different from the content production model of mass media, the content production model of social media is user-generated content (UGC) model, that is, user-generated content is its main core content and has its own style.

With too much content, users’ attention is ultimately limited

Taking WeChat official accounts as an example, a report from iMedia Consulting shows that there were only 1.44 million WeChat official accounts in 2013. After the end of 2016, the number of WeChat official accounts increased by nearly 9 times to more than 1,200; in 2017, the number is expected to increase by 10 times to more than 1,400. Looking back at the beginning, users had less content and their attention was relatively focused. However, with the development over the past five years, after the initial freshness and excitement passed, when overwhelming and diverse information enriched user choices, the fading of traffic dividends under the oversupply of content brought challenges to self-media and platforms. The slowdown in growth in readership is a bottleneck encountered by 80% of self-media in the past year.

Taking a research report on public accounts released by Penguin Intelligence as an example, the largest proportion of users follow 10-50 public accounts, accounting for 50%; followed by users who follow less than 10, accounting for 40%; and those who follow more than 50 public accounts only account for 10%. Among them, nearly 80% of smartphone users frequently follow or pin no more than 5 public accounts. Self-media people have to face the fact that there are fewer and fewer opportunities to significantly increase the number of users, content is flooding, and consumer attention is ultimately limited. It has become crucial to compete for user time and deepen user experience.

Image 1: Number of public accounts followed and number of frequently followed WeChat public accounts (Penguin Intelligence)

Analyzing the audience: The impact of the 20/80 content principle and strong relationships on content dissemination

20/80 Content Principle

When asked which channel WeChat public accounts are the most considered for obtaining information, nearly 20% of users chose WeChat as their first choice, nearly 40% chose it as their second channel, and nearly 20% chose it as their third channel. As the mobile social application with the largest number of users in China, the development of WeChat's public accounts has become an important information application for Chinese mobile Internet users. Its main uses are in obtaining information, learning knowledge, and facilitating life.

So what are the content consumption habits of users today as they change? As more information enriches users' choices, we find that content consumption users are transitioning to "non-need" and general reading, and more of users' fragmented time is consumed in content products that are relaxed and casual, have new narrative styles and strong personal descriptions.

Penguin Intelligence has proposed a new concept that the public has a clear 20/80 split in content consumption:

• Less serious reading + more light reading
• Less topic reading + more extended reading
• Less searching reading (strong demand) + more encounter reading (non-need)

Image 2: 20/80 content split (Source: Penguin Intelligence)

All thresholds and reading are being dissolved by self-media. For example, professional vocabulary is being replaced by colloquial language; traditional research style structure is being replaced by a rich mix of pictures/texts/videos... Content consumption has entered a wonderful era, and the narrative style is beginning to become light, flat and discrete. The value of this user change lies in opening up a new opportunity for content creators that is different from traditional content production methods and platforms.

Strong relationships have a greater role in "recommending" content

According to a survey report from iMedia Consulting, the articles shared by users themselves mainly come from three aspects: the highest proportion comes from "articles shared and forwarded by friends", reaching 75.4%; the second is from "articles from public accounts that I follow" (61.6%); and the proportion from "articles shared and forwarded by relatives" is also relatively high (43.8%).

This shows to a certain extent that content shared by strong relationships such as friends and relatives is more likely to cause users to share and spread it again. However, content shared by weak relationships such as "unfamiliar people" has a relatively low effect on causing users to share and spread the content again. The Moments have enabled public accounts to exert greater power, and users tend to share articles that are rich in sentiment or emotion. Among them, 50.6% of users frequently share articles in the Moments, 43.9% of users occasionally share articles, and only 5.5% of users never share articles.

These data show that strong relationships have a greater "recommendation" effect on content, allowing high-quality content (information) to flow in the relationship chain.

Interpreting the nature of the audience: what content is most important to users and allowing information to flow in the relationship chain

During the creative process, content creators need to understand changes in users and understand what content users find useful. What content can flow in the relationship chain? I think these are the two main essences of content thinking. Only when content creators grasp the essence of the audience can they continuously write high-quality, innovative and stylish information (content).

Principle 1: What content do users find useful?

Grasping users is not just about product thinking. I think the operation of public accounts and content thinking are also important. A few days ago, I read several articles about writing by Teacher Li Xiaolai in the Get column. There was a passage in it that I think can be used to think about content thinking.

Following this question of “what content users find useful”, content creators can gradually refine and deepen their own questions:

• Is what I wrote useful to others?
• If what I wrote is useful to others, how useful will it be? How to be useful?
• If what I wrote is useful to others, how many people will it be useful to? How to make it useful to more people?
• If what I wrote is useful to others, how long will it be useful to them? How can I make that period longer?
• If what I wrote is useful to others, how can I elegantly let people give me appropriate feedback?
• …

Principle 2: Let information flow in the relationship chain

This is a sentence that I remember very clearly after reading the book Social Dividends: let information flow in the relationship chain. We can start from the three key points that make up this sentence: information, relationship chain, and interaction (a synonym for flow), to establish an understanding of maximizing content benefits.

Formula: Maximization of content benefits = information (content) × relationship chain × interaction

"Let information flow in the relationship chain" is the basic understanding that is first established. Information, as the first principle, is also described in detail in Principle 1. What kind of information do users share? How many friends can it attract the attention of? In the social world, the quality of information is very important . Is it interesting? What emotions are contained?

Every user has more or less friends in their social accounts. This is a simple understanding of the relationship chain. Whether it can be followed by more users' friends will not only verify the quality of the information copy , but also attract more interactions. We often associate the weak relationships, strong relationships, and strong+ relationships in the relationship chain with the content and the business, so that we can find the best starting point.

Interaction is like an amplifier . The higher the interaction, the more users the information will flow to, bringing greater effects. The occurrence of "interaction" (comments and forwarding) itself depends on how well the "information" copy is written, and the number and closeness of the user's friends. Interaction is also the simplest and most direct motivation, which promotes the spread of valuable information among people by word of mouth, forming a word-of-mouth effect and viral spread.

Content is the meat, relationship chain is the bone, and interaction is the blood. Only when the three are linked together can the maximum profit be achieved, which is also the essence of the content thinking of the official account. For content creators, the key is to always keep abreast of the changes, motivations and principles of the target audience and write valuable content. Only in this way can you capture the users' emotions, and they will be motivated to help you forward and comment, thus forming a word-of-mouth effect and viral spread .

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