When positioning your content, you must be clear about why you are starting!

Although sometimes there may be various ways to success and different paths, I believe that the principles and fundamentals of choosing the path will not be wrong. As the saying goes: Always be clear about why we set out.

01

Once you have a differentiated focus on content (" Operations also require restraint, let's talk about the differentiated focus of content operations"), then congratulations, you will basically not make mistakes in the starting direction of content operations. But having the right direction does not mean that you will succeed in the end, because to success, you still need to take a quick, correct, and less crowded path.

I call the process of discovering this path content positioning.

Yes, if the content positioning is extremely accurate, then you have taken another solid step on the road to success.

But most people are initially unclear about how to find this path.

There is a reader in my WeChat public account who runs an online store selling ham and bacon. The first sentence he added to me was:

Brother, I am in the ham business, what should I write on my public account?

Well, you can write some scientific knowledge about ham, such as how to distinguish good ham from bad ham, how to store ham for a long time, what is the difference between Jinhua ham and Yunnan Nuodeng ham, etc.

I answered with my mouth watering, thinking that maybe after I finished answering the question he would give me a ham.

I have written before, but as I was writing I found that there was nothing to write, and I was distressed.

Well, then you can write more about the cooking techniques of ham. For example, how to cook ham best, stew soup, stir-fry, bake...you can write a lot of content like this, right? Maybe if you create a public account like "Ham Version of One", then you won’t have to worry about not being able to sell ham!

I continued to answer, drooling all over the keyboard.

I can’t write that! Brother, even though I’m just a ham seller, I actually know very little about how to make this ham. Although I have a general idea about it, I can only fool the buyers. If you want to write a real article about it, I can’t do it.

Well, then you can write some stories about your store, the ham products, discount promotions, customer feedback, visits to ham companies, etc. These contents are not only easy to write but can also be output continuously.

I continued to deal with it, brother, don't fool me, who would watch these things?

After he finished speaking, he gave me a smiling expression in return.

That's how my ham was gone.

02

The above is just one example of the many feedback issues I encountered when running a WeChat public account , but I think this example is very representative. Many people who do not have content operation thinking are easily confused when they first create content.

I don’t know what to write, what to post, and how to position my content. So at this time, I might as well suggest that you can refer to the following principles to make a preliminary establishment of the positioning of your content.

First of all, one of the principles of content positioning is to ensure that after positioning, you or your team can have the ability to output content more frequently and sustainably.

In fact, many people seriously neglect this principle before doing content positioning.

Here is a story:

I have two friends around me whom I met by chance in an Internet entrepreneurship group. Since we are in this group, you all know that basically everyone is thinking about how to start a business every day when they have nothing to do.

Seeing that Papi Jiang’s videos were very popular a while ago, these two friends of mine also thought about creating a video public account and shooting some funny videos of complaints. Maybe they can also successfully replicate Papi Jiang! But when I briefly talked to them about the differentiated focus of content operations, they immediately changed their minds and thought that since everyone else is making funny videos, why don’t we find a new way and make something else!

So what content should we produce?

Make... just make short emotional videos !

And sadness should be the main thing.

There must be a beautiful heroine, it must be shot outdoors, it must be short and quick, within 5 minutes, and it must capture the feeling of Zhang Jiajia. It would be best if users can cry after watching it, and want to watch it again and continue crying.

The two of them were dancing and gesticulating with such excitement that I was embarrassed to interrupt.

I told you to stop.

Not to mention how high the cost of this content is and how difficult it is to implement, have you ever thought about whether such content can be output quickly at the beginning?

Writing the script, finding the right people, rehearsing the lines, framing, shooting, editing... have you ever thought about how long the chain of completing all this is?

Even someone like Papi Jiang who shoots video content directly with her mobile phone can barely produce one video per week. I actually have doubts whether you can produce one video every two or three weeks.

They both looked at each other in bewilderment.

When doing content operation, content entrepreneurship, or self-media , high-frequency output of early content is actually very important.

If you output content slowly at the beginning, for example, you post an article only once in a long time, then you will definitely not be able to attract any users.

This is also why many self-media people and online novelists will write like crazy at the beginning, but when they have gained a certain fame, they will gradually reduce the frequency of content output. Because there are enough users gathered in the early stage, stable self-propagation can be fully guaranteed.

03

We also made similar mistakes when we were running the auto insurance public account.

Since all platforms had already done in-depth work on car -related content at that time, we suddenly had an idea and decided to take an unconventional approach and create comic-style car content.

We even designed the image, the plot, the style, and the tone.

Everything seems fine, with differentiation and focus, but we have overlooked this key issue:

Our content cannot be output at a high frequency and for a long time.

Although we have our own hand-drawn designer, we found out after practice that if we want to produce a comic content, the creative chain is still very long, from writing the planning script, copywriting , submitting it to the client for approval, taking it back for drawing, modifying it, etc. Therefore, it is very tiring to maintain our high-frequency content output. Even when the hand-drawn designer resigned, we found that we had lost even the stable output.

Therefore, at the beginning of content positioning, operators must be able to foresee whether their content can be output frequently and continuously in the future.

Otherwise, you're digging a hole for yourself.

The second point of the content positioning principle: Your content positioning must come from a keen insight into user needs.

This demand may be the user's demand for functions or knowledge.

For example, if you look at my public account, this is due to the need for operational knowledge;

This demand may also come from the user's spiritual and emotional needs.

For example, people get comfort from reading chicken soup-like content; they get curiosity from reading gossip; they get pleasure from watching Papi Jiang, and so on.

In short, no matter what, your content positioning must be able to meet some of the user's needs.

04

In this regard, I would like to cite a very successful case.

It is a vertical music APP.

The music APP was officially launched in 2014, and instantly made a breakthrough in the music playback market which was dominated by giants such as Himalaya and QQ Music. After about two years, it gradually became popular among those born in the 1990s, especially those born after 1995.

I think this music product is a classic example of successful content positioning. The reason for the successful positioning comes from the product founder's deep contact with and keen insight into users.

In the process of contacting users, the founder discovered two problems:

• one. The tastes of post-90s listeners in music are becoming more and more unique. In addition to popular songs, every listener probably has his or her favorite niche singers and songs. These niche singers may be domestic underground musicians, folk musicians, or foreign third-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, seventh- or eighth-tier bands, rappers, and wandering singers; they may be various two-dimensional music soundtracks, or they may be theme songs of film and television dramas from various countries, and so on. If you count carefully, this is actually such a huge content library, but these contents are precisely ignored by mainstream music products.
• 2. Because of the different scenarios, compared to the people born in the 1980s who listened to music while driving, running, doing housework, etc., many users born after 1995 like to listen to music while looking at their mobile phones.

Subsequently, the founder quickly established his own content positioning and product direction based on these two needs of users.

Taking niche, curious, and all-encompassing music as the entry point, we quickly mobilized users to upload various content in the form of UGC to establish the product tone.

At the same time, in view of the user's needs, the barrage function is added while the song is playing, so that you can listen to the song while watching the barrage.

Based on these two core points as well as the product's excellent UI design and a series of effective promotions, it has now established a firm foothold in the field of music playback apps.

But I firmly believe that the key to the success of this product lies in its content and product positioning, which not only meet the emotional needs of users, but also meet the functional needs of users.

Therefore, you can actually find that content entrepreneurship and content positioning actually have the same ideas as commercial entrepreneurship, product positioning, and product manufacturing. They all start from the user's perspective and explore from the user's needs.

All of this requires you to communicate and contact a large number of users, as well as to observe them more carefully in order to discover their needs.

I believe that any content positioning that is determined on a whim and at home will be abandoned by users.

So I would like to suggest the brother who sells ham to talk more with his customers. Maybe you will find inspiration from your customers.

05

The last principle is that the positioning of the content should be in line with the capabilities of the content operator.

This “operator” could be you, him, or the entire team.

Sometimes there are always some people around me who suddenly have the urge to create their own public account, especially girls.

Girls want to try everything, which is good.

Many girls told me that they were planning to create a public account about beauty, makeup, or dressing.

Because they feel they have their own style when it comes to makeup or clothing matching.

It seems like every girl thinks so...

At least from my perspective as a straight guy.

But when they started writing, the girls found that there is a long distance between "having a set" and writing it out clearly.

This is a serious mismatch between one's own content positioning and one's own abilities.

However, when companies now recruit WeChat operations , they will recruit people with relevant industry experience, so that the ability difference will not be too big; even if there is a big difference, they can make up for it by reprinting authorized articles.

But what I want to emphasize today is that content operators must also be good at using their own abilities and advantages to position content and create their own style in the competition with similar products.

There is a public account in the entertainment section that I have been observing for a long time. As everyone knows, competition in the entertainment self-media is very fierce. It is not only a competition of writing skills, but also a competition of who can grasp the most timely and reliable celebrity information first.

As the founder of this public account has studied abroad for many years, he can get the most timely information about foreign celebrities in the shortest possible time. In addition, he has strong bilingual skills and can translate and write. Therefore, he quickly established his position in the entertainment self-media circle through a large amount of timely and explosive news, and became the most professional and authoritative chief self-media for foreign celebrity information. This is how he used his own advantages to make the correct content positioning and widened the gap with his competitors.

The other public account is very niche, but also very successful

This public account is about the port...

You wouldn't expect that?

The founder of this account is a senior figure in the port and shipping industry. He used his influence in the circle and his information collection ability to create a public account that provides information, professional content, and emotional resonance for port people. Although the field of this account is very niche, it still has a considerable number of readers and fans. Although it cannot be compared with the big accounts, I still think that his content positioning also takes advantage of his own advantages and is also successful.

06

As a professional Internet operator,

When I was about to finish writing this article, I looked back at my own WeChat public account. Although it was not successful, it still basically met the points I mentioned above.

• First of all, I chose the sharing and thinking of full-system operation cases as the first dimension of content positioning. The high-frequency output of content in this field is foreseeable. It will not be like many niche fields, where there may be nothing to write while writing.
• Second, through communicating with many operations colleagues around me and analyzing their needs, I position my content to start from actual cases, tell it in the form of stories, and end with self-reflection, striving to provide my users with content that is readable, not boring, not hypocritical, and has a certain degree of inspiration.
• Third, the positioning of my content must remain within the scope of my writing ability and cannot go beyond it. For example, if someone asked me to write an Internet strategic case, I would definitely not write it, because it neither fits my content positioning nor matches my ability; I will not easily write about products, design, etc., for fear that I will not be able to hold on and be ruined because I jump out of my own positioning.

So, even though sometimes there may be various ways to success and different paths, I believe that the principles and fundamentals of choosing the path will not be wrong.

As the saying goes: Always be clear about why we set out.

I would like to use this as a reminder to you who are struggling with content operations, and also to remind myself.