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News information is the basic market, and the difference between the headlines lies in the experts.

Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Chaotic Book” (ID:luanbooks), author Pan Luan.

This year’s Toutiao Vitality Conference did not release any major strategies or products. Zhu Wenjia just said that we must practice basic skills: “It is nothing more than better content, more accurate recommendations, and better creator services. A little bit.”

The theme of the conference is “Salute the insights”, which represents that the headline content ecology has entered a professional and focused stage. At the content level, news information and pan-knowledge are the basics. Toutiao found that new increments are professional authors. For this reason, Toutiao Singularity Studio was established to help 1,000 authors better create video content. At the creator service level, the “Toutiao Expert Plan” was launched, which will help professional authors grow from personal branding, flow and cash support, and content monetization. It is expected to help 10,000 “expert” creators in the next year Revenue of 1 billion yuan.

Picture: Hong Fei, general manager of today’s headline content ecology

It feels that the market has passed the explosive growth stage, and it is difficult for each company to make major innovations in product mechanisms, and competition has entered a battle of positions. Today’s requirements for everyone are to do the basic work well, do the product experience well, do all the basic elements needed to make a recommended product right, adjust it if you did not do well before, rely on these points Another basic skill improvement to win users.

In the process of doing all the basic elements and grasping key things to promote growth, I have noticed some new changes.

Sensual and rational

Information flow products care most about scale and efficiency. They are extremely rational, but their content is very emotional.

I remember 6-7 years ago, with the exception of Toutiao today, all news portal managements had a mystery and confidence in “quality content.” But today’s Toutiao is a product for users, focusing on the real needs of usersset off. Because compared to the progress of the US election today, I may be more concerned about whether the subway entrance at my door has been repaired. “Professional” judgment does not necessarily represent the real needs of “users”.

The recommendation system is decentralized, and the core product logic is to allow the machine to find out the most likely content for each user from the massive content. But today’s hot lists in Toutiao have to be judged by operations and are centralized. The user needs that Hot List wants to solve are: the efficiency of looking at hot spots in Toutiao is still not high enough. I hope there is a place where you can see the most important hot spots at this moment.

I mean, whether the quality of a content is important or not, the recommendation is not visible, it is necessary to have perceptual content that understands the content. Need to understand the content of people and engineers, as well as the review team to cooperate well. At the same time, it is also necessary for the content person to have a certain abstract ability and be able to make the principle of subjective relative objectification out. For example, how to classify the content, how to make the quality, how to clearly define the problem, and finally verify it through some indicators.

To make content products requires a combination of rationality and sensibility. If you believe in one end, there is a high probability that the title party and porter’s style of painting is strange, or that the high score and low target income are constantly falling and it is difficult to sustain, and there is no way to form a healthy content ecology.

Today’s Toutiao mainly relies on feed distribution, which is very efficient, and then put the hot list of fixed distribution on the homepage, it will definitely affect people’s efficiency. But this matter cannot be completely data-driven, so how to make a decision based on integration?

The first is to believe in how you feel as a user. It is that some users want to save time and quickly understand the most important world events at this moment in a short time. For example, during the epidemic, users just watch the epidemic and don’t look at anything else. From their own feelings, they can know that this centralized distribution is needed. The second is to do user research, user interviews or survey questionnaires, to understand what users think about this matter through various methods. Sometimes things are just simple principles, not necessarily everything can be solved by one method.

In addition, in addition to the fixed entry on the homepage, the integrated hot content will also appear in the information stream. The hot list product can be regarded as a new variable in the headlines, integrating new content and hot topics of various genres, and personalized recommendation and distribution of grafting strips. This is a new form of expanding the scale of consumption.

As for how to adjust the ecology, how to control the transportation flow, and what if the result index drops? In the middle, we need to look more at the process indicators, and look at this matter a little bit. If you only look at the big indicators of the results, it is difficult to reach in the short term, but you can find some sensitive indicators, Let colleagues as ordinary users experience the content style of the product, hoping to change the quantity into a qualitative change. When market competition changes from incremental to stock, the competitive advantage of the platform may have to be established bit by bit.

First, we must believe that the combination of sensibility and reason is right, and then look for a path in reverse.

No platform can be made bigger by low quality and handling.

Basic Disk and Difference Disk

Last year’s vitality conference Zhu Wenjia mentioned that the strategy of today’s headlines is horizontal and vertical: “one horizontal” is the richest content genre, and “one vertical” is as many distribution methods as possible. How to better organize production and how to better distribute content, this year also feels like a continuation of this context.

At the beginning of 2018, I used to think that “WeitoutiaoThe road ahead is bleak”. The reason is that Wei Toutiao has been following Weibo and do it behind, the head is big V and no one is qualified, follow the micro headline There is no difference in headlines. Wei Toutiao is a UGC product, and the content itself is not standardized. Using Toutiao’s standardized content methodology to solve the problem of user expectations, why should I come here to watch it?

Weitoutiao’s data has been negative for a long time, and it was not until this year that it finally became positive.

The indicator is negative. Why can Wei Toutiao stick to it, and how does the business perform positively?

I asked a related student in Toutiao, and he said that this matter is essentially an economic problem. Wei Toutiao is not inferior to the article in terms of efficiency, higher production efficiency and lower production costs, and Wei Toutiao is more efficient in acquiring traffichigh. There must be more people who can post micro headlines than people who write articles. Short content can leverage production on a larger scale. This matter is logically feasible and theoretically feasible. If it is not done right, it may be that something has not been done right and there is a problem with the implementation.

As for the specific work, it is nothing more than “recommendation to be better, better quality, and better creative services.” Correct the basic elements, the content ecology and user insights, and correct the previous ones. Especially good place to adjust.

For example, food content, why a large number of white-collar women in social media are engaged in the production of baking content, because many unemployed housewives need to learn to bake and be a micro-business to subsidize their families. The food content of Toutiao has more recipes, because it is practical and easy to use for the user group of Toutiao. Or brush the technology content in the headline. In addition to company information, you will see many first-line practitioners, such as chip practitioners, electrical engineers, and engineers. Legal content includes hot legal reviews and legal science popularization. The coverage rate of lawyers practicing civil law, criminal law, and commercial law is high. Of course, in addition to experts such as doctors, lawyers, professors and scholars, the headlines also include people from all walks of life, such as auto mechanics, sow breeders, and tailors. There are still many industry professionals whose creativity has not been developed.

Today’s user’s preferred APP for news and information is today’s headlines. What information is there around the recognition? These are basic disks. For example, the content coverage of various news, the entry of core media, and the rapid, accurate and timely push. For example, in the Taiwan Strait area, everyone’s basic information sources come from several core media. But at the level of interpretation, there are many personified authors on the headlines, such as Qiu Yi from Taiwan, and Huanyu Worldwide. Many guests and hosts are on the headlines.

The definition of expert author means:

• First-line practical experience, with insights and insights into the work of the industry

• Good at summarizing, loving to share and express output

• Aspiring to gain influence and create value for society

If the content is divided into three types, information, knowledge, and entertainment, everyone has the same source of information in terms of information. The actual difference lies in the interpretation of the content and different views on things. Pan-life is essentially knowledge. This year’s Toutiao top 100 authors are distributed, with 45 in life, 35 in knowledge, and 10 in entertainment and information. This number is actually very illustrative, and it proves that the demand for valuable and important content in the market is now more vigorous.

In addition, when you scan some popular Douyin videos, there will be related reading entries below, and clicking on the article will jump out of the headline. The cross-terminal complementation of graphics, text and video, the linkage of the two content pools, has increasedNew content discovery and consumption scenarios, which means that there will be a larger consumption scale in the future.

Toutiao promotes the creation and sharing of expert authors in Toutiao, and the result is differentiated by multiple viewpoints, comprehensive interpretation, rational thinking, and professional experience. This year’s Toutiao’s brand concept has also been upgraded to “see the bigger world”, behind which is Toutiao as a one pass Thinking about the social value of using information platform:

We hope to let more insights from all walks of life be seen by more people and gain greater influence. Because these insights can provide users with more guidance, more perspectives, and enable users to see a larger world.

Picture: Today’s Toutiao CEO Zhu Wenjia

Consumption→Creation

Bytedance’s products have been solving content creation, distribution and interaction issues.

Today’s Toutiao was initially aggregated to solve the problem of content distribution. The recommendation algorithm is a generational improvement for content products dominated by editors and subscriptions. However, institutional media and self-media teachers are both a source of water for the world, and Toutiao is more biased. Recommend and distribute instead of authoring.

Douyin solves the content creation problem. It focuses on content creation tools and creators’ behavioral logic. Behind it is thinking and optimization around the camera and the people behind it. These users and content can only be created in Douyin. Distribute and interact.

Because creators are the source of everything, good content ecology must start from the source of production. After the creators come, they need to provide them with good production tools and materials to stimulate production. In terms of production relations, you cannot always expect creators to use Love Power. To solve the relationship between creators and consumers, creators and platforms, creators and monetization.

Toutiao is the first product in the industry to actively send money to creators. Various support policies help authors gain influence and realize returns. In 2015, it was also at the Toutiao Creators Conference. Today Toutiao announced that it will engage in tens of millions of people and share traffic, and will use real money to support and attract more self-media authors. This content subsidy strategy quickly introduced massive amounts of self-media content into the Toutiao system. The number of Toutiao accounts increased from 35,000 to 300,000 in the first year, an increase of nearly 8 times. Behind the changes, Toutiao’s price is that the monthly share has increased from 3 million yuan to 30 million yuan.

In 2019, Toutiao launched the IPUP program to create personal IP for creators. In addition, on the video creation experience side, Toutiao will get through with Cutying in December, and authors can use Cutying and quickly post to Toutiao.

For graphic creators, or newcomers who want to try self-media creation, the platform content incubation team will participate in the necessary key links to help authors create personal IP through video. The number of authors created in two years has increased from 6 to 258, and the average daily vv has also increased from 280w to 7000w;

TapThe authors include Professor Qiu Yi, CCTV commentator Zhang Bin, Guoguan Professor Yu Qiang, and NPC Fei Teacher An, Song Zhongping, Hong Huang, Dr. Sany, Sannong scholar Wen Tiejun, Han Qiaosheng, Doctor Zhang Zhiying, Professor Zeng Guang, Sister Xiaohong’s delivery room, actor Zhou Haimei, etc. Nearly 200 pan-information, pan-knowledge, and pan-entertainment creators joined , Covering scholars, professors, media professionalsCommentators and many other vertical fields.

In the past year, there have been five main ecological tasks for headline content:

• Build a creator growth system (100 fans to 100,000 fans, different incentive rights)

• Improve the creation training system (productize the Toutiao public class, and have served millions of authors)

• Upgrading the ecological management mechanism (supporting high-quality originals, suppressing transportation)

• Assist in creating IP for video creation (investing operational manpower/traffic/funds for creators’ videoization)

• Improve the monetization of creators (upgrade the share of graphics and text, open the micro-headline/question-and-answer share, and access the giant star map)

Like the Internet, short videos start from shallow to deep. In the past few years, short videos were still the master of face dance. Today, it is more about life and knowledge, and the content of the platform is becoming informationalized. In the medium of short video, the content will also change from shallow to deep. More and more information and knowledge will be presented in the form of video, and more depth will be covered.

For example, I am a creator of graphic-text-to-video conversion. Why do short videos? Because there are barriers to reading, the video does not. “Video content is more three-dimensional than graphics and text, and has a stronger sense of communication. After converting to video content, many authors have a higher visibility in the industry field and have gained influence in the industry with their own personal brands. Power.”

For example, last Sunday, I had something to eat at the cafeteria in the new office of Toutiao, but some of my classmates recognized me secretly and posted it on Wei Toutiao. This is something that I have written for years and thousands of micro headlines have never happened before. It should be related to my appearance in the video.

The videoization of information has actually just begun.