How to create opium-like articles that users can’t stop reading? (superior)

Many people would emphasize that today in the era of mobile Internet , people read in fragmented ways and content is moving towards being thin, fast and small, but our content is the opposite. One is that the articles are long, usually more than 3,000 words, and some can be tens of thousands of words. Another reason is the high information density. If the same content is written according to the rhythm and structure of traditional media, the length will be twice as long.

Although it is long and heavy, it has won the recognition of many readers. Today, the Elephant Association’s WeChat subscribers are close to 900,000, and the average number of article readings exceeds 100,000. The most common comment from readers about us is that it is “an educational experience”. There are many exaggerated praises for us, but I think that among all the evaluations, the highest praise is not those lavish and exaggerated words, but this evaluation: The Elephant Guild is selling contraband again.

This comment contains the following meanings:

• He dislikes us greatly because of certain notions and preferences;
• Although I don't like it, I can't find any faults with it.
• Although I know that I will feel unhappy every time I watch it, I still can't help but watch it again and again.

You can make people who don’t like you always want to watch your stuff and finish it every time. I think there is no greater sense of accomplishment than this. I think only opium can do this: you find it harmful, but once you get addicted to it you can't get rid of it.

This PPT is the ABC of some basic experiences we share with new colleagues, from the communication characteristics of different platforms, to topic selection and structure. It is called "How to create a product like opium that makes people unable to stop." Let’s first talk about the differences in the communication characteristics of different platforms.

Steamed buns, pizza and food shows: Communication characteristics of different media platforms

When we create content on mobile devices today, we must first have a general understanding of the communication characteristics of different communication platforms, because different content will have completely different communication effects when placed on different platforms. Because I have been working in traditional media for more than ten years, and some of our colleagues have previous media experience, I will also talk about the communication characteristics of newspapers and magazines.

Here are some of our favorite magazine covers. Then pay attention, a major feature of the cover title is that it is very short. The thickness of a magazine usually ranges from 100 to 160 pages, but the content is reflected in such a few short words on the cover. I randomly selected 50 magazines. The average word number of their titles was about 5.3 words. With 5.3 words, more than 100 pages of content were sold. In fact, most readers don’t know what is being sold. So how do its readers determine and choose?

I think it is mainly based on identity based on class, ideas and region. For example, if I am a literary youth or a middle-class person who considers himself to be pursuing culture, I will buy "Sanlian"; if I am a young person from other places who pretends to be a pioneer, I will buy "New Weekly"; if I am a bourgeoisie, I will buy "Caijing"; if I am an official or entrepreneur who is deeply concerned about current affairs, I will buy "Phoenix Weekly".

Although newspapers have strong regional and professional characteristics, you can also see this difference. For example, in Beijing, if I am a white-collar worker living in Beijing, I might buy the Beijing News. If I were a middle-aged white-collar worker with a Beijing household registration, I might choose the Beijing Youth Daily. If I were an old man from Beijing, I would buy the Beijing Morning Post. If I were a Guoan fan, I would buy the Beijing Evening News and so on.

Although newspaper headlines are much longer, when they are folded on a newsstand, you can only see two strips. So, whether it is a newspaper or a magazine, its title is like a bun, with the filling inside. You make your choice based on your long-established self-identity and generally have high loyalty. The title mainly determines whether he buys or not, rather than which magazine or newspaper he chooses.

Let’s take a look at the portal.

Just take a few portal websites across the country; in fact, one portal website is enough. Because there is almost no difference. Of course, there are also differences in identity recognition among portal websites. For example, civil servants like to read Xinhuanet.

Reading traditional media is based on expectations and directional needs. I will buy what I want to see. However, it is completely different with portal websites. To a large extent, there is no such prior reading expectation. Attention is attracted randomly, and what you see is actually highly random. That is why you can see that the titles are particularly long, and they want to list all the keywords and information elements in the title. This is the standard set by Sina.com . The title length is generally between 18 and 30 words, and all portals learn from it. When you open the portal, you'll see densely packed long headlines, and you can see at a glance what the content is today. Compared to the traditional media mentioned earlier, it's like pizza, with all the ingredients laid out on the surface.

This pizza is naturally more tempting than steamed buns. You have no way of predicting how long you will spend browsing the website after opening it. At this time, the content that everyone reads randomly is rarely related to identity recognition, but appeals to human instinct. We cannot count the number of readers of each news item on the portal website, but the number of its follow-up comments can be collected. If there is a positive correlation between the number of comments and the number of readers, then the number of comments on different content can be considered to reflect its number of readers.

This is the number of comments on different content on NetEase that I have counted. It more or less reflects what people really like to read and what they don’t like to read. You see, "Stewardess was cheated into working as a prostitute, and the suspect acted as both the introducer and the customer" is obviously news that the people really like to hear and see. "China and Ukraine jointly developed eight killer weapons, and Russia is dissatisfied and makes Russia lose money" is the most popular news among patriotic young people. And "Chinese rich second generation drunk driving in the UK, supercar confiscated but still no regrets" is definitely good news that can mobilize the emotions of the people. "The scientific principles behind thunder and lightning" has only two comments, so of course you don't need to be surprised, it is very similar to "Taking a bath together! Compared with "Shooting an indecent video, 2 men and 1 woman seek excitement in a hotel", it is certainly more difficult to arouse people's interest in reading.

This is the content recommended by the portal website. The first one is "Chinese Dream, My Dream". Can you guess how many people are willing to open it and read it? This part is the comments, which is given a very prominent position. This is the serious content that they themselves are really willing to recommend to readers, but if you look at the number of comments, it is even lower than the scientific principles behind lightning and thunder. With such a good position, the number of comments shows that no one actually reads it. This is fundamentally different from ten years ago, when comments would have very heated discussions. This actually reflects why our newspapers and magazines are dying, because people's reading interests have changed a long time ago, but they are still producing content that no one reads.

Of course, some serious content will still be read by people, such as NetEase's Other Side. Like Tencent's Today's Topics, it is the highest-quality content produced by portal websites with the highest intelligence. It is a facade to show their strength and is much higher than the level of most newspapers and magazines.

However, if you look at the mobile side, you will see how much reading preferences have changed on different communication platforms.

That’s right, the mobile pages of various media outlets are very much like smaller versions of portals, with a long title, a title picture, and then an introduction. But it can only accommodate four pieces of content, and the page information is very limited. Which of these four pieces of content should I choose? Their standards are actually the same as those for ranking news on portal websites.

Therein lies the problem. Since only four pieces of content can be displayed each time, most of the content cannot be seen directly by readers, and few people can open the extended links in it. Therefore, on mobile devices, the dissemination of content depends entirely on distribution and sharing on social media .

Today, the largest social media is WeChat, and information dissemination relies on forwarding in WeChat Moments . When people post content on WeChat Moments , their main intentions can be summarized into two: one is to display, and the other is to share.

The so-called display means that I display my lifestyle, life attitude and spiritual outlook through the release of information. What a person displays is actually the ideal state he hopes and imagines, which is usually one level higher than the actual situation. For example, if a person eats braised pork five times a week, he will certainly not show off that he eats braised pork all day long. However, if he eats Japanese food once, he will definitely show it off. He wouldn't show off when he went to the Zoo Clothing Wholesale Market to buy clothes, but he would show off once he went to Ginza in Tokyo even if he didn't shop. He can show off if he runs five kilometers, but he certainly won't show off if he stays at home for two days and looks dusty and dirty. Similarly, showing off children, cats and dogs, and showing affection are based on the same psychology. I hope to use this information to show how much I love life. Of course, what’s important is that I have a high quality of life and care about the society.

Sharing is because I think it is useful to my relatives, friends and colleagues within my circle of acquaintances, so I post the content for everyone to see. The simplest content is chicken soup, various chicken soups, health preservation, various health preservation, because it is something that concerns the health of the mind and body. Next up is the information that I think is important. I will talk about what is important information in detail later.

The communication characteristics with display and sharing as the main purpose make the information posted on social media very much like Meitu Xiu, which is inadvertently and deliberately selected. Because the information posted in the circle of friends actually has some kind of strong screening mechanism. Although theoretically any two people can establish connections through a very limited circle of friends, it looks like it is open, but in fact, everyone's circle of friends is basically semi-open, because although you follow each other, you can choose whether he can see what you post and whether you see what he posts.

Therefore, any circle of friends is a collection of specific ideas and preferences, and information is spread among a specific group of people. A person who insists on buying the Global Times rarely sees content from the Southern School, and vice versa. A person who loves Chinese medicine and health preservation rarely sees articles against Chinese medicine by the popular science party, and vice versa. A person who loves Tang suits and bracelets rarely sees content attacking Chinese traditional culture all day long, and vice versa.

Here we will talk about why Weibo is bound to decline and die.

Because from the very beginning it intentionally creates clashes and conflicts between people with different ideas to attract attention. However, human nature is to avoid and reduce conflicts, because conflicts will bring psychological pain, anxiety, tension and uneasiness, especially in a torn society like China, where there is a lack of public expression of different ideas, so it is easy to point to personal attacks. Some conflicting topics will cause problems with taking sides, which will bring extremely strong psychological discomfort and social pain.

For example, the Fang-Han battle and Chai Jing's smog, former friends and acquaintances were forced to split into two factions, and finally reorganized your social relationships. Stable social relationships are the most important pillar of our psychological security. Encountering such public events, which often lead to being forced to take sides, will cause psychological pain to many people. Except for those who love to argue by profession or identity, most people will instinctively gradually reduce their enthusiasm for participating in such conflicting social spaces.

Think about it, if you were a celebrity, and you posted photos of your kids and your loving family, and then a large group of irrelevant people came and asked you why you didn't express your grief for some unfortunate incident that just happened, and why you still had the nerve to show off your life, what was your intention? How many mentally normal people can accept this?

WeChat, on the contrary, has an information filtering mechanism that helps you build a stable social circle that can protect your psychological safety. Its information is basically what you want your friends to see. It will not trigger the reorganization of social relationships. It is warm and meets people's psychological needs.

Why is chicken soup popular in WeChat Moments? Because chicken soup is almost a rare type of information that can penetrate all semi-closed circles of friends and can be accepted by different people, the warmth and familiarity of the circle of friends also make it possible for chicken soup to nourish and maintain this atmosphere very well. In essence, no one actually hates chicken soup.

A recent article said that people who like to post chicken soup articles have low IQ. If we redefine chicken soup from a functional perspective rather than a content model, we will find that in fact all people like chicken soup. This is determined by human nature. It’s just that the core and models of chicken soup that people of different age groups like are very different. The so-called people who post chicken soup articles have low IQs, but in fact they are reflecting the discrimination chain of chicken soup articles - chicken soup for those born in the 1980s discriminates against those born in the 1970s, chicken soup for those born in the 1970s discriminates against those born in the 1960s, and chicken soup for those born in the 1960s discriminates against those born in the 1950s; and the people at the previous level of the discrimination chain do not realize that many of the things they like are actually chicken soup.

Why are people born in the 70s and 60s heavy forwarders of chicken soup? Because they are the group with the greatest pressure in life and are the group that needs psychological and spiritual comfort the most, and chicken soup has a short-term and quick-acting soothing function, although in fact it is of no use after a while, it is precisely because of its no use that chicken soup must be given continuously.

In contrast to the fact that chicken soup is completely invisible in traditional media and portals but is very popular on social media, some of the most popular content on traditional media and portals has completely disappeared in the circle of friends. For example, when the website editor finds that the number of readers has not yet completed the daily task at 4 pm, he will immediately know what news to change. For example, he can post a few articles with the following title: A young female teacher died naked at home from gas poisoning while taking a bath, followed by a bracket: multiple pictures. The assessment task can be completed quickly. However, do you dare to forward the article "A young female teacher died naked at home from gas poisoning while taking a bath (multiple photos)" in your circle of friends? How should people around you see you? Therefore, the news that flight attendants work as part-time hostesses, which is the most popular news among the people, cannot be spread in the circle of friends because everyone is embarrassed.

Coming back to the topic, what about content that is both serious and popular? For example, let’s compare the data on the other side of NetEase mentioned earlier. They have been deeply involved in this for many years, have a very good brand, and have been on WeChat for a long time. However, you can see that for exactly the same title and content, the number of readings on WeChat is pitifully small, and the number of readings is only equivalent to the number of comments on the portal.

Why it is not popular on WeChat. Let's first look at some of its titles, "It's not illegal to give birth in the United States, we should thank the U.S. Constitution", "American scientists are blameless for killing kingfishers for specimens", "Stewardess was stuffed into the luggage rack, don't take sexual harassment as fun", "Merchants violently overcharge customers, selective crackdowns are useless". It is not difficult to find that these titles are highly condescending in tone and one-dimensional, with a very strong sense of intellectual superiority. The most fatal thing is that they are debating with an imaginary enemy of ideas.

We mentioned earlier that the circle of friends has its own specific context and atmosphere. If you forward an article with a strong tone of instruction, it is obviously an offense to everyone in the circle of friends, because it does not contain any characteristics that can arouse emotional and conceptual resonance. It is an unquestionable, aggressive, and quarrelsome attitude. Not only can it not be spread, but it is also bound to be disliked.

In terms of titles, no matter how weird the titles used by portal websites are sometimes, on the whole they are still very standardized models taught by professional journalism schools, and the basic information can be known by just looking at the title. However, today, mobile devices have spontaneously created a new grammar that does not follow news textbooks at all. Some headlines do not tell you what is inside, but instead emphasize that you would be low if you do not read this information, or that it has made 10 million people cry. Do you want to know why? This is a remarkable language revolution that is ongoing. They use every possible means to induce people to open and forward messages.

However, not all content is spread by posting on WeChat Moments. A very small amount of content is not suitable for forwarding on WeChat Moments, but it can still have a very high number of readers. For example, if you are making practical strategies like how to control your husband or how to pick up girls, they will not be spread by forwarding on WeChat Moments, but can be effectively spread through point-to-point sharing among like-minded people who trust each other.

On mobile devices, information dissemination mainly relies on the characteristics of social media forwarding, which narrows the categories of content that are easy to spread, but the amount of information itself does not decrease, because the demand for refinement of popular content categories has been greatly increased, and there is a possibility of dissemination. As long as your content is liked by a specific audience, no matter what proportion it is in the population, as long as it is done accurately and attentively, and operates in your ecological niche long enough, you will always find and accumulate your own audience. So, on mobile devices, the producers of information are highly decentralized, which is completely different from the past.

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This article was compiled and published by the author @黄章晋 (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!