Content Operation | Three essential elements for a popular article!

A movie cannot have good box office just by having a good script. It also needs the right director and actors, as well as sufficient publicity and good opportunities to gain better reputation and box office. The same is true for articles. In addition to the topic selection and writing skills, a good article is also related to many factors such as sentence structure, paragraph structure, and fan structure.

Topic selection

The day before yesterday was October 5th, the 5th anniversary of the Mekong River incident. The reports from many mainstream media such as People's Daily will definitely have a positive impact on the box office of the movie "Operation Mekong" today. Going back further, on April 18, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television asked PAPI Jiang to rectify the vulgar language in the video, which also brought its attention to the peak. The following figure shows the data from Baidu Index .

If your article on April 18 was about PAPI sauce, and today it is about "Operation Mekong", the chances of it being popular are greater. Therefore, opportunity is very important when choosing a topic for an article . In addition to popular Weibo posts, Baidu Search Ranking (http://top.baidu.com/category?c=7) is definitely a good place for you to choose a topic. You can see the real-time hot search event rankings. Baidu has classified them for you, such as all, social livelihood, entertainment gossip, etc. There are definitely good hot materials that fit the positioning of your article.

The picture below is a screenshot of Baidu Search Ranking at 19:00 on October 5th.

If I were asked to choose a topic to write an article, I would definitely choose the number one topic, Ai Fukuhara’s suspected involvement in drugs. There are three reasons:

1. Ai Fukuhara is extremely popular in China, and anything related to her will definitely attract a lot of attention;
2. The doping of athletes is worthy of attention in itself. Everyone wants to know whether Ai Fukuhara is a "good person" or a "bad person";
3. This matter is more contagious. It is happening now, and the outcome is unknown. Regardless of whether the result is good or bad, once the result is released, it will inevitably arouse heated discussions among netizens: I knew someone was slandering her, you shameless human beings; it turns out that Ai Fukuhara is such a person, I have liked her for so long.
4. This matter ranks first in search index and has a higher “hotness base” than other things, so of course the topic is selected “from top to bottom”.

So, apart from choosing a topic that suits the timing and is similar to "riding on the popularity", are there other things worth considering? have. Here are three points:

1. Simple and strong value judgments are more likely to be popular . This intention is either this or that, and people can understand it at a glance. For events like "Ko Chen-tung's involvement in drugs" and "Ma Rong's cheating", I might title the article "Shock! A well-known actor was arrested for drug-related crimes”, “Shameless! Ma Rong has an affair with Baoqiang's agent and is in control of all of Baoqiang's property. Personally, I prefer to state my stance on similar matters right in the title.
2. The material must have a resonance . There was a book called " New Media Rules" before. Regarding the "Internet Carnival", the author said, "People only care about things that are related to them." More broadly speaking, I think it should be the event that resonates with people. One of the main reasons why PAPI Jiang became so popular is that her complaints expressed what many people wanted to say but were too embarrassed to say, and this resonated with most people.
3. Your attitude has accumulated from past events . For example, someone wrote "Ace of Comedy has a bad reputation and lists all the bad movies made by Andy Lau but was cheated by Wong Jing".

Write a good topic

In traditional media, the quality of the title directly affects whether readers read the content of the report. This effect is even more obvious on the Internet. If you can’t write a good title, then you might as well not write the rest of the article, otherwise you’ll waste your time and effort only to end up with few people clicking on it.

First, let’s talk about the selection probability formula of Mr. Schramm, the father of communication studies: “The probability of a certain information being selected = expected reward/expected cost”. Simply put, when readers read the title of your article, they will have a judgment in their minds: how much do I have to pay and how much can I get? If this ratio does not satisfy them, they will definitely not choose to read your article. On the contrary, you can't help but click in to take a look. Edit two titles here so you can get a feel for it:

• 《Learn these 3 tricks to earn 100,000 per month》
• "These 50 tips will help you easily master the rules of survival in the workplace"

The title is a bit exaggerated, but the meaning is very clear. Even if they are skeptical, many people will click on the first one to watch, while the second one is basically ignored. So what can we do to increase the probability of selection? Of course, the solution is to enlarge the numerator or reduce the denominator as much as possible. Let's swap the numbers in the above two questions:

• 《Learn these 50 tricks to earn 100,000 per month》
• These 3 tips will help you easily master the rules of survival in the workplace

Let’s take a look now. Would you like to see it even if it’s only 50 moves? After all, a monthly income of 100,000 is very tempting.

Okay, let’s talk about how to write a good title. I think there are five points to consider:

1. Specificity . If the event contains factors that are different from general matters, it is best to list them to reflect the core value of the article. For example, "Shenzhen responds to the central government's new property purchase restriction policy" is not as attractive as "Shenzhen introduces the most stringent purchase restriction order, the down payment for the second home must be no less than 70%."
2. Proximity . List the factors in the event that are most relevant to the readers to attract them. In many policy-related reports, People's Daily often begins with the words "it concerns you".
3. Phased . Many things will attract everyone's attention at the very beginning, so readers are most concerned about the "latest developments". For example, everyone was talking about Baoqiang’s divorce. If you use a title like “The Latest Developments in Baoqiang’s Divorce Case”, even if what you write is a fact that has existed from the beginning, many people will click in to read it. Everyone will think that what they see is the latest, unless the publication date of your article is significantly behind.
4. Key data . Data is often more convincing than words, and readers don’t need to spend too much energy deciding whether to read such articles. This is also the reason why articles with this title exist in large numbers, which I will not list here.
5. Answer questions and resolve doubts . For example, "Guo Degang published a long Weibo response to Cao Yunjin", it might be better to title it "Guo Degang: I am still here, and I will not complain about my indifference"

Of course, it is not just the above 5 points. It is also advisable to create suspense and ask questions to arouse curiosity.

Finally, let me emphasize two points:

1. The titles of articles on the Internet should be easy to search . After all, when many people are paying attention to something, they are very likely to search for related articles to read. Therefore, whether there are corresponding keywords in your title determines whether your article can be retrieved.
2. The structure is simplified to meet the requirements of the website . Many websites will tell you how many words are optimal for your article, so if you exceed that range, your article will naturally not be recommended.

Text structure

Confucius once said, "Words without elegance will not go far." In other words, if your article lacks literary talent, it will definitely not spread far. So just laugh off the saying that was popular on the internet before: “It’s not that I’m uneducated or have a low vocabulary, but when joy, excitement, sadness, loneliness, anger, despair, depression, calmness…all these emotions can be expressed with just one word: fuck?”

Whether it is self-media writing articles or operations staff writing copy , the biggest characteristics are accurate, simple, straightforward and easy-to-understand language . In today's fragmented reading world, everyone scans at a fast-paced pace. Besides, our feelings are not deep, so why should I waste time trying to figure out your profound and mysterious meanings?

Furthermore, the sentences must be concise. American writer Rudolph. Frech said that each sentence should be no longer than 19 words. Although no one has yet to comment on the appropriate length of Chinese, it is always better to be shorter and more concise.

Also, a paragraph should not exceed 5 lines, and an article should not exceed two computer screens. If you start with a large, densely packed text, people will lose the desire to read at all.

Research shows that the most readable text color combinations are black text on a white background or blue text on a white background . So don't make your article colorful easily. If you want to emphasize, try to make it bold first, then turn it to blue, and then make the blue bold again.

In addition, many websites have requirements on the structure of article content and the size and position of pictures. Only by understanding these can you better write and layout articles. The specific requirements of Sohu Public Platform are listed here for reference (http://health.sohu.com/20151023/n423989239.shtml).

Fan structure

Research shows that the main reason most people go online is to relieve stress, escape from demands for distraction and emotional distraction, and want an emotionally pleasurable and aesthetic experience. According to the "Research Report on the Structure of Chinese Internet Users", Internet users under the age of 25 like to watch entertainment-related programs the most; Internet users aged 25-34 like to watch domestic current affairs and entertainment-related programs the most; people with lower incomes are more dependent on entertainment programs; and women love to watch entertainment programs the most, and this seems to be the case regardless of age group.

In summary, "entertainment" is the main reason why people go online. This also indirectly explains why entertainment programs such as "Happy Camp", "Running Man", "Go Fighting" and "Day Day Up" can continue to flourish.

So if you want to write an article, with limited time and energy, entertainment topics are the first choice. Of course, understanding the composition of your fans is necessary for you to position the attributes of your articles. We can also see that big accounts like "Hu Xinshu" occasionally send out questionnaires to collect fan information for better operations.