You need to be aware of these trends in self-media advertising in 2017

The self-media industry is already on the eve of a major change...

In the past year, the self-media advertising industry has developed explosively. Live streaming has swept social media as a hot topic, attracting a large amount of traffic ; KOLs have entered the customized service stage, but chaos such as false traffic has caused a huge stir in the industry; this year, WeChat mini-programs have opened up the "weak" link traffic market and reshaped "scenario" marketing . Mi Meng once attracted millions of fans with one article, leading a group of self-media to start the road of traffic monetization. Recently, Tencent quietly announced the start of public testing of paid reading for public accounts, directly hitting a number of knowledge sharing platforms...

The development situation of the self-media industry seems chaotic, but in fact there are traces to follow! So, what development trends will the self-media industry present in 2017 regarding advertisers, agents and self-media, and how should we respond? This article will answer your questions one by one~

Development trend of self-media industry

1. Multi-platform development

We-media platforms are developing towards diversity. In the current self-media field, in addition to a few platforms with a large enough scale such as Weibo and WeChat , platforms such as Yingke (daily active users exceeding 15 million), Miaopai (registered users exceeding 10 million), Huajiao (daily active users exceeding 5 million), and Zhihu (registered users exceeding 6 million) are rapidly rising, and traffic is shifting from concentration to dispersion. Since live streaming became popular across the country last year, the coexistence of multiple platforms has become an established fact. Each platform attracts brands to settle in and develop with its unique value.

2. Strengthening of industry segmentation

Today, it can be said that self-media has surpassed the era of "wild growth" and entered the stage of "refined and vertical" growth. This sentence can be understood as follows: In the early days, self-media as a new thing quickly attracted people's attention. People did not have high requirements for content. Self-media did whatever attracted attention, and humorous and funny content quickly became the focus. Nowadays, the self-media accounts that attract attention are often opinion leaders in a certain field, and they have unique views and insights in their own fields. This is driven by the increasingly discerning eyes of the audience, and it also makes it easier for brands to accurately target their audience.

3. Increased IP monetization

Generally speaking, there are four types of self-media monetization channels : advertising, e-commerce , content, and IP. The so-called IP means that your self-media account always has a name or image facing the audience, and it is distinctive and has enough personality to be remembered by the audience. For example, Guanba (Caring for Gossip Growth Association) has its own image – the eggshell. Their programs and videos always focus on this image. Later, "Eggshell" can be monetized as a separate IP, whether it is brand implantation, offline activities or brand co-construction, there are many ways to play.

4. Popularization of paid reading

Recently, the WeChat public account's "paid reading function" was launched on a small scale and was pushed to the forefront of public opinion. Paid reading has been widely promoted on " Fenda " and "Weibo", and WeChat has also recently started internal testing of the "paid reading" function. The era of content monetization by making money from knowledge is really coming. But for brands, this will be both an opportunity and a challenge. KOLs who can monetize through "knowledge output" are very likely to reduce the amount of advertising they undertake in the future. How should brands respond to this change? I will give you some tips later in this article.

Brands will prefer self-media advertising

1. “Money” is moving towards self-media, but it won’t happen overnight

Brands’ advertising budgets are shifting from “traditional advertising” to “self-media advertising”, and this trend is irreversible. Although it is self-media, the migration of customer budget is by no means achieved overnight. It takes time to leverage, and this time may be longer than expected.

2. Increased demand for live broadcasts, short videos , etc.

Brand owners are increasing their demand for short videos, live broadcasts and other forms of advertising. After 2016 became the "first year of video marketing", video will receive more attention from the market in 2017, and brand owners' investment in this field will continue to grow.

3. Mid- to high-end self-media are more popular, while non-famous self-media "band together for warmth"

Brand clients are increasingly willing to invest their budgets in mid- to high-end self-media. Even if the price is high, brands are happy to invest in them given that they attract a large amount of traffic. In the future, there will be a polarized situation. Expensive self-media will have no shortage of advertisements, while a large number of unknown self-media will be "rarely sought after" due to their high competitiveness, serious homogeneity, low value and other reasons. In the future, these accounts will develop their own survival rules, and they will need a strong agency to integrate them and provide results-oriented services to brands.

Beware of the minefield of self-media advertising

1. Expensive and flooded with water numbers

The proliferation of fake accounts is a major cancer in the self-media industry at this stage. In the market, the cost of fraudulent clicks and top-posting is extremely low. Brands invest tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in self-media advertising, but a "bad-intentioned" water account only needs less than 1,000 yuan to "originally" create a 100,000+ click. This phenomenon of undermining market competition has caused advertisers to have doubts about data and has greatly reduced the authenticity of the effectiveness of social marketing .

2. Incomplete effect evaluation

Self-media advertising has certain limitations in data monitoring and execution supervision. Advertisers want to evaluate the brand's popularity and reputation among the target audience, but the data handed over by the agency is often the number of reposts, comments and readings. Based on their own doubts, advertisers are even more skeptical about the authenticity of the market feedback represented by this data.

3. Low match between brand and self-media

When considering whether a self-media account can be placed, in addition to its number of fans and readings, the degree of match between it and the brand tone should also be considered. All of this is based on analysis of audience groups. Agencies should help brands gain in-depth insights into their audiences. Where do they usually gather? What kind of creativity do you accept? At the same time, only companies with massive high-end self-media resource libraries can help brands accurately locate suitable self-media accounts, thereby bringing marketing effectiveness. Without data monitoring, it will be difficult for brand owners to accurately reach the target audience with marketing activities , even if the self-media has millions of fans.

How brands respond to changes in the self-media industry

1. Establish strategic thinking for all self-media platforms

Brand owners need to think across all platforms based on their brand tone and layout in the field of self-media advertising. We cannot only consider large-scale platforms such as Weibo and WeChat, but must systematically and selectively develop new self-media platforms. Make efforts in multiple dimensions and win in multiple dimensions. For example, in 2016, Jeanswest realized that fast fashion clothing brands had made few attempts in social marketing, and at the same time, domestic brands were squeezed by foreign competitors and their living space was getting smaller and smaller. Therefore, we decided to implement the communication strategy of "lifestyle entertainment", bypassing the traditional celebrity endorsement model, and "flying close to the ground" by jointly speaking on multiple social communication platforms such as WeChat + Weibo + Miaopai + Douyu , using WeChat articles, Weibo celebrities , video bloggers and live broadcast experts to reach the audience in an all-round way.

The final exposure volume easily exceeded 100 million, multiple WeChat KOL pictures and texts exceeded 100,000+, the live broadcast of internet celebrities became the most popular, and the original video received nearly 100,000 comments and interactions from netizens. While establishing a precise and effective KOL resource library, it also brought new vitality to the Jeanswest brand.

2. Co-construction of brand and self-media content

Driven by the "IPization of content", brands should consider establishing a long-term cooperative relationship with self-media and jointly building content. For example, "12 Cylinders" can co-found a public account with a certain car brand. The content is produced by the self-media, but the cars written about are all from the brand. In this way, the brand and the self-media jointly build a media and create content.

3. Full process data tracking

"Full-process data tracking" is also a key task for Ruiyi Hengdong this year. In the past, we were relatively vague about the data when placing self-media advertisements. We would simply place an advertisement when we saw an account with good traffic, but we had no way to evaluate the effect after the placement. But this will become controllable after the full-process data tracking is officially launched. Before placing an advertisement, we track all the data. After placing an advertisement, we also track all the data in order to conduct a precise analysis of the effect of the advertisement, conversion rate , etc.

4. Closed loop of social marketing

Ruiyi Hengdong has been steadily making progress in the field of social marketing for many years, and has accumulated a professional team of hundreds of people and multiple technical products, just to achieve an ultimate dream, to create a true digital marketing closed loop and provide customers with a one-stop solution from communication to sales. In a complete social media marketing closed loop, what is considered is not just how the brand speaks out on social media, but more of the entire process from initial data analysis to final sales.

Ultimately, the various changes in the self-media industry are bound to have a ripple effect, and no change will come "suddenly". Following the signs of change, whether it is self-media, brand owners or agents, they should respond proactively and take advantage of the general trend of industry development to improve their own "transformation."

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