2019 Unofficial Survival Guide for New Media Operations!

New media operation is not easy, and everyone who works diligently and perseveres deserves praise.

The good news about the development of new media is that the popularity of content consumption and the average time consumed per person are still increasing, and users' demand for content is far from saturated; the bad news is that the top market has basically stabilized, and it is difficult to find a breakthrough entry point.

The norms and development of the new media industry have become clearer, but the operational path for new media people has become increasingly difficult.

Head-breaking titles, topics that never make sense, hot topics that float by one after another, 100,000+ assessments at no cost, gaining and losing followers, exhaustion of creativity, etc. How many black silks have turned into white hair, how many brains have banged their heads against the wall due to worry, and how many teenagers have started to lose their hair.

From day to night, from revising to redoing, we are not short of methods, but what we may lack is systematic knowledge, which makes us more confused, anxious, and at a loss.

Everything will continue in 2019. Here, I will give you an unofficial survival guide for new media operations in 2019, hoping to help you solve operational problems more appropriately.

1. The title should set the tone, but don’t be too aggressive!

The title is not about how the disease can be fatal when it gets serious!

When operating a WeChat public account, you can never escape the topic of writing titles. The title directly determines the opening rate and even the subsequent forwarding rate. Success or failure sometimes depends on the title.

Too many WeChat operators think about the title every day until they vomit blood, and then continue to think about it. I don’t know how many brain cells have died. Some even set up a title group to focus on coming up with titles.

The title can use various techniques to attract more clicks and maximize the opening effect. for example:

Create suspense and curiosity, related to "sex", related to "me", contain conflicts, use specific numbers, describe details, chase hot spots and hang out with rich people, Zhihu style, use contrast, stimulate pain points, provide solutions, highlight benefits, create an atmosphere of urgency, emphasize scarcity, indicate the region, promise value, use big V endorsement, inventory collection, add modifiers before and after, imply danger, have guidance suggestions in the title, directly indicate the beneficiary, stimulate emotions... and so on.

These methods can indeed greatly increase the click-through rate of the title, but sometimes they are too technical. If you just use various means and techniques forcibly, you can come up with a good title, but it may also be garbage.

what to do?

Combining title techniques, Lao Zei has created a 4C title rule based on his own experience and observation, trying to interpret what I understand as a good title, so that you can also understand some of the principles of a good title. This 4C rule is not a magic trick for titles, but it can be used as an implementation standard to avoid writing junk titles in the end!

2. How to plan topics more efficiently and intelligently?

80% of the success of an article depends on the topic!

This statement seems exaggerated. But many times, this is indeed the case!

But~choosing a topic is difficult! What content to produce for a public account has always been a concern for operators. It’s okay if you have built your own topic bank, otherwise you will be selecting topics, selecting topics, and selecting topics from morning to night. Many of my friends are going crazy about this.

Especially for novices or people who have just taken over a new public account, many of them don’t know where to start. They write one article every day without any clue.

Lao Zei also has some thoughts on this, and has written several articles on this before, including methods for selecting topics, some standards, ways of thinking, etc.

3. How to increase the attention rate of pictures and texts on public accounts?

In addition to the selection of topics, whether the pictures and texts of the public account can gain attention and whether it can increase the number of followers has always been a matter of great concern to everyone.

You often see headlines like this all over the WeChat Moments: "XXX gained 50,000 followers after one article" and "XXXX gained 100,000+ followers after four articles in one month."

It feels like the world is a great place! But the fact is, there are only a mere 1% of such cases, while 99% of public accounts have lower and lower opening rates, and bring in fewer and fewer fans. They work hard to increase the number of readers, but users just don’t pay attention after reading them.

How can you gain followers if you don’t pay attention? No amount of activities or advertisements will help!

Although we always say that the quality of a public account's fans is more important than the total number of fans, this is just like what Jack Ma said, "Money is something outside of one's body and is not important." Only when a public account has developed to a certain size will one become so indifferent to the increase in fans.

So how can you effectively increase the user attention rate of your official account so that more users are willing to follow you after reading your articles?

This may be the common and biggest anxiety of all new media operators.

4. Is there any hope for recovery if I lose followers after just one push?

How many editors dream of having 100,000+ fans? They rack their brains to do this, choosing topics, writing articles, working hard on typesetting, working day and night to organize events, and shamelessly seeking promotion everywhere...

After much effort to increase the number of readers and gain a group of fans, two words fell from the sky:

Unfollow!

Seeing these two words makes me tremble with fear. I lose followers when I don’t push the message, and I lose even more followers when I push the message. This is the most painful thing for a new media editor!

So what can we do about such a tragic and miserable situation?

In addition to staring at the data for an hour, at least we need to know:

Since the user followed you in the first place, there must be a reason, it might be because of one of your articles, a column, a function, a service, an interaction, an event, etc. Correspondingly, after a period of time, he unfollowed me again, and there must be a reason for that.

Many people like to work on it immediately after discovering a problem, without analyzing the cause at all, and just make changes as they see fit. If you don’t analyze the reasons for losing followers, how can you truly find the key factors that reduce the number of fans unfollowing you and solve them?

You can read the article that Lao Zei posted before: "Old driver, please save me: Is there any hope for my public account as it loses followers as soon as it is pushed? 》. Lao Zei talked about the possible reasons for the loss of followers of a public account from four aspects, hoping to help everyone better analyze this problem.

5. What should I do if the official account is stuck and has no direction?

When you are operating new media content, you will always feel lost, stuck, and suddenly don’t know what to do.

At this time, there is no need to rush.

In fact, we can start with the two most basic indicators: article opening rate and sharing rate.

The open rate reflects whether your topic and title are attractive enough, which directly determines whether users click on the article; while the sharing rate reflects whether the content of your article is impressive enough to users, which directly determines the secondary dissemination of your article.

Based on the opening rate and sharing rate of public account articles, all tweets of a public account are nothing more than the following four types:

Category 1: High open rate, high sharing rate

Category 2: High open rate, low share rate

Category 3: Low open rate, high share rate

Category 4: Low open rate, low share rate

We can calculate the average historical opening rate and sharing rate based on the historical data of the official account. Using the average data as a benchmark, you can know which type each of your articles belongs to.

In this way, we can prescribe the right remedy and target our problems.

You can take a look at the previous article: "No direction in running a public account? Understand these 4 types of articles and don’t panic! ”, the method has been given.

6. What to do when you run out of creative ideas?

Creativity is something that is hard to fathom.

It is both scientific and mysterious.

It is both rational and emotional.

It is both divergent thinking and focused thinking.

It has many methodologies, and sometimes you have to put aside all of them.

But unfortunately, when operating new media, we need to be creative, and most of the time the creativity cannot stop, we always need a lot of ideas.

In short, new media operation is not easy, and everyone who works hard and perseveres deserves praise.

Even though when the times abandon you, they won’t even say goodbye.

However, instead of staring into the abyss, it is better to stride forward and seize the day!

I wish you all the best in 2019!

Source: Mumu Laozei (ID: mumuseo)