It took me 3 years to dig out the "core business secrets" of self-media

This article will focus on "content products" and explain to you what content is, what good content is, how to create good content, and what opportunities there are in the content track.

Some time ago, Bilibili announced the annual barrage for 2019. Hot words and memes on the entire Internet, such as "AWSL, famous scenes, and catching shrimps", all came from this small broken station.

But you have to know that a few years ago, "creating memes" was still Weibo's signature skill.

Even a powerful platform like Weibo cannot escape the fate of being quickly abandoned by users.

It can be seen that the strategy of doing things around the media itself is quite dangerous - it is not to say that there are no opportunities, there are opportunities, but they are short-lived.

Therefore, we have to find the unchanging thing beneath the media and work around it to achieve stability.

Regarding what this thing is, in the previous article "To new media people: Why I advise you not to do new media", I answered it from the perspective of "corporate products".

Today's article will focus on "content products", including: what is content, what is good content, how to create good content, and what opportunities are there in the content track.

I will deliver to you a core "content quality model" , which is the result of my systematic thinking after practical experience in the front line.

This article will also use this model to reinterpret the current phenomena in the new media industry and give you a new perspective.

Come, have a drink of water. Today’s food is hard and dry, and it will fill you up. enjoy ：）

01 Things that remain unchanged in the media

To explain the unchanging thing in the media, we must first use a model - the value model:

This model is extremely versatile and can be applied to any industry:

• For the catering industry: chefs create value by cooking, waiters serve food, and Ele.me delivers food to pass on value;
• For the retail industry: craftsmen are creating value, while supermarkets, Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo are delivering value.

It is not difficult to find that the means of delivering value are constantly changing, but value creation itself is quite stable.

The Chinese have been in the catering business for thousands of years. From restaurants to Ele.me, the way of serving food has been changing, but the core idea that "the food must be delicious" has never changed.

So what is the core value of the media industry?

I think there are 2 types:

1. As I wrote before - Enterprise Products - Enterprises create value by generating products, and then spread and sell them through TikTok and Taobao.
2. Our protagonist today - content products - content creators are responsible for producing content and then disseminating it through WeChat, Bilibili, etc.

Enterprise products are easy to understand, but what are content products?

Let's continue:

02 What is content and content products

To be honest, when I first entered the industry in 2017, I was also confused about "what is content".

Until I heard Teacher Ma Dong share, I finally got it:

He said that some contestants on "U Can U Bibi" would suffocate to death if you don't let them speak. He can argue with you for two hours over a trivial matter.

What this means is that content creation comes from the inner impulse of the content creators. If these people don’t write or speak, they can’t survive and will become very anxious.

We can understand that the generation of content is a person's inner desire to express himself.

According to this standard, every post we make on WeChat Moments is content - every selfie and every complaint is an expression of our desire to feel uncomfortable without posting.

Moreover, different people express themselves in different ways.

Some choose to write books, some debate, some sing, some make movies...

• "Odd Talk" is a debate where contestants express their "odd" views on the world;
• The movie "Don't Tell Her" expresses the director's thoughts on "whether to tell a family member about his or her illness";
• Eason Chan's song "Red Rose" is the lyricist's understanding of "what you get and what you don't get in love";
• TED is more direct, with its slogan simply being "Sharing ideas worth spreading" - it provides a platform and invites people to speak.

As long as you have the desire to express yourself, you are a content creator, no matter what method you use.

So what is a content product?

In a word, what you want to express should not only make you feel good, but also make the people who hear it feel good. It's not about having fun by yourself, but about having fun in a group.

The logic of content products is exactly the same as that of enterprise products - the reason why products can be sold is because they are useful to consumers.

As for how to "sell" content products, we have to rely on new media.

Some content is suitable for being made into text and spread on WeChat; some is suitable for being made into videos and played on Douyin and Kuaishou. The media is merely a vehicle for delivering content products.

Up to this point, it’s actually not difficult, they are all concepts; what is really difficult is how to create good content?

03 How to create good content

Everyone has the answer to this question:

But as someone who entered the industry from another industry, I always feel that there should be a more systematic model that can answer this question.

After 3 or 4 years of hard work and in-depth exchanges with content experts, I think I have found it, which is the "content quality model" below.

There are only 2 dimensions in total, requiring 4 abilities.

1. Let’s talk about content depth first

Here I would like to borrow Professor Wu Xiaobo’s classification of content to explain:

He divides the content into five categories, from gossip to values, from the simplest to the most complex:

• Gossip content is the most superficial and instinctive need of human beings. It is said that humans invented language originally for the purpose of sharing information and gossip, and the demand is still huge today. But gossip has a very short shelf life. Today’s gossip will no longer taste good after a few days.
• After gossip, there are news and information, and the content gradually becomes opinionated, attitude-based and responsible.
• Afterwards, this information with opinions will gradually settle, become knowledge, and finally rise to values.

It is not difficult to find that the further back in time, the more stable the content becomes. For example, Buddhism belongs to the category of values ​​and has remained unchanged for thousands of years.

However, to dig into such depth of content, extremely high thinking ability is required - content creators need to go through layers of flowing information to dig out the underlying unchanging content value.

Fortunately, because values ​​and knowledge are difficult to change, great content creators only need to connect.

What line is it connected to?

Connect fresh gossip with certain values ​​and knowledge that have existed for many years.

Therefore, we will find that many articles start with gossip that readers like to hear and finally fall back on a certain value, such as: feminism.

Isn’t this what Teacher Mimi Meng does?

But it is not easy to connect the lines well.

This requires a large amount of knowledge and ideas, as well as the insight to dig out the core from gossip and news.

For specific training methods, you can read my previous article "The 4 things the organization that was banned by the entire Internet taught me are so awesome! 》.

2. Content Experience

After talking about how to tap the value of content, let’s talk about how to deliver that value through a satisfying experience for readers.

I also made a similar graph for content depth:

First of all, the reading experience of pure text is definitely not as good as that of video with pictures and movement.

Which would you rather watch: a 120-minute special effects blockbuster or a 200,000-word novel with the same content?

It must be a movie, right?

In addition to text and video, there are several other forms in between. For example, the comic strips that were very popular last year, and the H5s that will inevitably be on the screen several times a year.

It is not difficult to find that comic strips are actually text + pictures, while H5 is comic strips + motion effects + music.

It can be said that each form of content is an upgrade of the previous one. And there is only one direction for the upgrade, which is to make readers happier - the more in line with human nature, the happier.

That’s why we have those popcorn movies with awesome special effects that make people’s adrenaline rush. They don’t need any connotation, and excitement is the core value of the content.

But there is also a problem here. There is no end to human pleasure - what makes people happy today may not be effective tomorrow.

This also explains why H5 screen swiping always comes in waves and is difficult to sustain because the novelty expires too easily.

To acquire the ability to satisfy readers, one needs strong user perception and innovation capabilities.

As for how to train, the method I have come across so far is to collect and disassemble the funny points and tear points - analyze your own emotions and find the techniques to create such emotions.

It all requires hard work and stupid methods.

After introducing the "content quality model", the next step is to try out some excellent content products on the market.

See what they did right and what opportunities they can find.

04 Opportunities

Let me first talk about a negative example of content:

In the past, when teachers were lecturing on the stage and students were sleeping below, it was most likely the teacher’s problem - as the person who conveys knowledge, the teacher did not use a good experience to convey the knowledge.

If we look at the good teachers nowadays, they must be both profound and funny, such as the internet-famous postgraduate entrance examination teacher: Zhang Xuefeng.

Another platform that follows the same path is Zhihu, but the content has changed from lectures to text.

One of Zhihu's core values ​​is to convey valuable knowledge to readers in a popular and entertaining way.

There are many such examples, such as the aforementioned "Strange Talk":

It can be seen that there are at least two types of opportunities to create good content:

1. Improve the reader experience of existing in-depth content;
2. Improve the depth of content that is already great.

Let’s take two dark horses in the public account field last year to verify:

The public account @半佛仙人, who built two accounts with one million followers in one year, is a typical example of "using jokes and jokes to talk about various obscure professional fields (such as financial scams)";

@就不画出版社 has directly made strip comics popular - turning text into comics with better reading experience.

But what’s interesting is that after @不要画, a large number of comic strip accounts appeared on the market, and the homogeneity was very serious. However, @不要画 is still 不能画, and it still has distinctive characteristics and is difficult to copy. Why?

I think that the core model of those accounts that grab the bonus of comic strips is actually to upgrade the experience of past cool novels and just add pictures.

But the depth of the content is still very shallow, and it is all emotional chicken soup like "These are the points that determine whether a woman loves you or not".

As mentioned before, upgrading experience is an endless process because there is no limit to human desires.

This results in the comic strip losing its depth of content after readers' novelty wears off.

The depth of the content that cannot be drawn is actually always online.

For example, a previous popular article: "'You can't see that I care about you'" is a topic for a strange debate - does not caring mean not loving?

It is well-reasoned and warm, leading readers step by step to the core of the problem.

This is their core advantage, an advantage that has been migrated from the era of writing. Add to that the newly developed ability to tell stories with images, and the competitiveness is extremely high.

This is also what I think is one of the opportunities in the comic strip track. After all, there are too few comic strips with such deep content (because it is difficult).

Some people may say, GQ Lab is also a cool novel, so why is it so awesome?

That's because they have taken the content experience to the extreme. Their ability to create new memes and play with technology is so strong.

Therefore, I still believe that after this wave of comic strip bubble, comic strips will return to the ecological niche that best suits them and produce the most suitable content for comic strips to convey.

Not being able to draw is one thing, GQ is another.

05 Conclusion

Back to the question raised at the beginning, what is the unchanging core beneath the guise of the media?

My answer is: content.

The media is only a carrier for delivering content, and the content itself must be valuable.

In order to enhance the value of content, I believe we can focus on two directions and four capabilities, and provide a "content quality" model.

Based on this model, we can identify at least two content opportunities:

1. Improve the reader experience of existing in-depth content;
2. Improve the depth of content in an already great experience.

It is easier said than done. To improve the depth of content, you must have a large amount of knowledge and a strong insight into information.

Improving the experience is even more troublesome. In addition to user perception, we also have to find ways to innovate and stimulate readers with discerning tastes.

But the good news is that it’s as difficult for you as it is for him.

Look at what "Teacher Banfo" said, "I just persevered. I have been writing for more than ten years, and only this year did I become a little famous."

The standard for an industry to be mature is that practitioners work hard on core values.

This is respect for the industry and respect for readers.

mutual encouragement.

Author: Hu Chenyu

Official account: I don’t like to talk about reason