New media operation: 10 methods to dig deep into materials!

More and more people are entering the new media industry, or starting their own media and writing articles. Compared to running a corporate account, it is more casual and there are fewer restrictions and rules.

The key, of course, is to write the content of the article first, making it meaningful, truthful, and a reflection of one's personality.

I often joke that writing a high-quality article is not a skill, but being able to write good articles over a long period of time is a skill.

But running out of inspiration and not knowing what to write is definitely not a uncommon thing for people who write articles for self-media. After writing for a while, you may have no idea what to write anymore, your mind may be stuck, and it may be difficult to produce content.

This is completely normal. After all, the human brain capacity is limited. As you write more, there will naturally be less and less content to write because the existing information is constantly being consumed. What should I do then?

In fact, there are many sources of article content, so don’t just dig in your own head.

Let’s not go into too much detail. Here I will just talk about some of the content sources that I have used in the past, hoping to open your mind.

01. Your work and life experience

The experiences of self-media people in work and life are definitely the best material for writing. They are not only real, but also unique and full of emotion.

Combining your own observations and thoughts on life, you will have an endless supply of writing material.

You see, many self-media celebrities often write about their own growth process and life experiences, which are very popular. They write very vividly and readers can empathize with them, such as "Should Women Compromise When They Get Older? I won’t.”

A good self-media person wins by his sensitivity to the world, his thinking about life, his unique observations, his insights beyond the ordinary, his special experiences and his life experience accumulated over many years...

To write 10W+, you must first live your life to be 10W+.

02. Social chat content integration

Where there are people, there is chat, and where there is chat, there is material. Believe me, if you pay attention to those QQ groups, WeChat groups, forum discussion areas, etc., you will naturally generate a large number of topics and content materials, and they are all what readers care about.

You can also take the initiative to start a discussion on a topic in one or several WeChat groups to encourage everyone to speak freely. These are all materials. Sometimes, just organizing the chat records can directly become a good article.

I have a friend who runs Knowledge Planet, and he has a trick, which is to find the best posts with heated discussions in industry forums. The discussions alone can be dozens of pages long, with many good ideas, but these points are rather scattered and messy.

Every time he would spend some time collecting and organizing them, and then post them on Knowledge Planet, which was quite popular.

03. Take advantage of hot topics and express your opinions

There is no need to say much about hot spots. They have always been the favorite of content creation. Not only do they bring their own traffic, but they also have high attention. People who read them are willing to forward them, and readers themselves also like to follow hot spots.

Nowadays, many people organize the regular hot spots every year, and almost every mainstream platform has a hot list, so it is not difficult to find it.

For example, Zhihu already has hot lists for the entire site, as well as hot lists in the fields of science, digital, sports, fashion, film and television, campus, and Zhihu Daily. They are all there, and these are an endless source of material.

All you need to do is to find the entry point of hot spots and repeatedly hone your sense of hot spots and unique perspectives. If you are used to writing about hot topics, you will never lack things to write about.

04. Look at other people’s experiences through your own eyes

Your own experiences and stories are certainly limited, even poor, but this world has all kinds of people and bizarre stories.

Your friends, your family, your colleagues, or other people's stories you see on the Internet can all be your materials.

Self-media people should be good at digging out these people and things, have keen insights and different thinking, tell stories to readers from their own perspective and vision, express your thoughts, and share your feelings and values.

For example, "A 48-year-old female courier was forced to kneel down: As a human being, I advise you to be kind" expresses the author's indignation and views through the story of this female courier.

5. Re-write the articles you have written

If we media people keep writing their own articles, they will accumulate a lot of historical content.

For example, you have to constantly push new content on a public account, and some old content can only be buried in the history page. Who would have the patience to keep scrolling down?

It would be a real loss for the author if the existing content was published and then forgotten. Moreover, many times, as individuals grow and their horizons broaden, many opinions will change, so it is better to revisit some of the high-quality articles you wrote before, add new thoughts, opinions or cases, and publish them again.

I still rewrite old content until now, because historical content is the best kind of content.

06. Follow similar accounts and KOLs

Learning from peers and referring to outstanding players in the industry is something that should be encouraged in every industry, and self-media people should not be too conceited.

If a colleague writes an article that becomes popular, it is probably worth your thought and you should try to write from your own perspective and approach.

If you disagree, you can also write from the opposite perspective. Taking a step back, the articles by your peers can also allow you to see how they dig up materials, so pay more attention to them.

07. Books, movies, and variety shows

If you want to write articles, then books, movies, TV shows, and variety shows are definitely a popular and huge content material library.

Writing is a process that requires constant input. When reading, watching movies, or variety shows, you can feel while watching, and then savor the content after watching. Writing reading notes, writing short reviews for movies, and recording impressive clips from variety shows are all very good habits.

Like TED, BBC, the top 100 best movies in the world, "The Debaters", "Tucao Conference", "Youth With You", "Round Table", etc., as long as you have time to watch them, there will be rich material to write.

08. Deep digging on third-party platforms

There are so many good content platforms these days. Wherever there is content, there is material. Like Zhihu, Douban, Toutiao, Bilibili, Weibo, Jianshu, Tik Tok, Tianya, Hupu, etc.

There are also some less popular ones like Guokr.com, The Paper, Yixueguan.com, Jiandan.com, Curiosity Daily, Xueqiu, Shouqu, AcFun, etc.

If you don’t watch them carefully for a day, you will find a lot of usable materials! !

For example, Yixueguan.com is a high-quality video website. All its video content comes from foreign websites, and the key is that they have all been translated into Chinese. The categories include: popular science, technology, film reviews, food, inspiration, business, society, travel, animals, children, psychology, education, anecdotes, workplace, fashion, etc.

Do you think it’s a show or not? Let me just talk about a few topics: Why do cats behave so strangely, how to respond to an apology, what obesity is, only 4% of poor Americans have escaped poverty and entered the middle class, and what happens if you eat all the time.

09. Dig out from the popular comments section

Since the BBS era, I have always believed that there are many great people in the comment section, with a large number of sharp opinions, which are concise and profound, and there are countless angles that you never thought of. These are all good materials.

When I was browsing the hot topics on Weibo, I often saw that many of the comment sections on popular Weibo posts were much more interesting than the Weibo posts themselves. There really were countless ready-made topics and countless materials that could be collected for future use.

There are many professional content creation teams that often integrate the content of Weibo comment sections, add some text, and it becomes a popular article, which is very impressive.

10. Industry Report

There are professional research reports in each field, and the content of each report is basically the essence of the industry, rich in content, and with many analysis points. We can analyze the report as a whole or a certain point, and there is a lot to write about.

You can look for reports from sources like 199IT, Penguin Think Tank, CBNData, Meihua.com, iResearch Consulting, Alibaba Research Institute, TalkingData, CNZZ, Datahoop Big Data Analysis Platform, Qianzhan.com, Dataview, China Statistics Network, DCCI Internet Data Center, 36 Big Data, etc.

Find as many entry points as you can and do your analysis.

Okay, that’s all I have listed. In fact, there are many more sources of article content. As long as you are good at discovering and persist in discovering, these sources of materials are endless.

I still hold the same opinion: develop the good habit of recording inspirations, ideas and materials at any time.

These collections may seem scattered, like fireflies, but their continuous accumulation will bring about qualitative changes and give you countless inspirations, which will be like the bright moon at that time.

Author: Mumu Old Thief

Source: Mumu Laozei