The content is the product with the highest ROI, there is no one
Editor’s note: This article comes from the WeChat public account“The old driver of the judge” (ID: panguansays) , author: Magistrate old drivers.
There was not much writing in the first half of this year. First, there was less outbreak, less chat and communication with people, and less inspiration. Then I was busy helping a few friends to build a system of content output, not as busy as before. There have been some staged achievements recently, so come out today to share.
My friends who are familiar with me know that I have been persuading my friends to actively output content. In the past, it was mainly for individuals to build brands and independent influence. But in the past year, the ecology of the content field has changed. I deeply feel It is very necessary for those who do business to stand on the front line of content output to divert their own business.
From subscription distribution to recommended distribution
Before the emergence of the WeChat public account, the mainstream form of content subscription and distribution was mainly RSS in foreign countries, and can be considered as Weibo in China. Users focus on a content producer or a node to consume the content they produce/forward. The advantage of this is to give the right of choice to some specific actors and accept their conscious content to feed.
WeChat public account inherits this logic and assumes the responsibility of providing content sources for WeChat ecology.
In an era of lack of content supply, users’ demand for content consumption is strong, and expectations are not high, making the public account originally positioned for enterprise services, being used as a media. At the same time, content distribution based on social relationships (friends, groups, circle of friends) can also be considered as a variant of subscription distribution, because social relationships are also a generalized (two-way) subscription relationship.
This wave of dividends gave birth to the WeChat public account ecology, but gradually diluted with the overload of subscriptions caused by oversupply. There are people who scan the QR code on the manhole cover, and these good days are gone.
By the way, before subscription and distribution, the mainstream distribution method of content is search and distribution, which also gave birth to ecology such as SEO/SEM/bid ranking. I won’t talk about it today.
As Toutiao and Douyin introduced algorithm recommendation technology to content distribution, the ecology of the entire domestic content industry has quietly changed. Between massive content producers and massive users, intelligent recommendation algorithms are more efficientMatch content, and distribution efficiency is no longer limited by subscription quality.
But at the same time, new content producers will complain that fans are not easy, and the older generation of vested interests will complain that the number of fans is not proportional to the number of readings.
But I want to say that this idea is outdated.
From rising powder logic to carrying goods logic
For a long time, the WeChat public account has been the standard for domestic content entrepreneurship, and the number of fans and reading has also become a benchmark for measuring content entrepreneurship performance.
Why does this happen? Because the WeChat public account is mostly realized through advertisements, the advertisers refer to the number of fans and the number of readings. The industry will give an external advertising quotation in combination with the positioning of the public account and historical data, commonly known as the regular price of the publication, and in the actual implementation process, the discount strength is case by case, and the outside world is unknown.
The existence of an advertising offer means two things: 1. The content producer needs someone to pay for his own traffic 2. The content producer needs to prove to Party A that he is worth the money.
In the era of subscription and distribution, this logic works, because historical data can be used to judge future performance (not to mention the situation where there is a brush data). However, in the era of algorithm distribution, it has become the norm to have millions of fans, but the ups and downs in reading/playback are huge. That is, the consumption of each piece of content is independent of each other, and at least no longer has a strong correlation.
On the other hand, advertisers are increasingly focusing on “integration of products and effects”, that is, in addition to pure brand placement and exposure, they hope to guide readers to achieve a specific goal. The amount of content consumed by the brush obviously does not help to achieve this goal.
This situation actually requires the content producer to be responsible for the results of content consumption, which is obviously very unfavorable to the traditional “media-based” content production method.
Another way of thinking, since content production that is out of business cannot meet the requirements of the business, what happens if the business side directly produces content?
Compared with subscription distribution, another advantage of algorithm recommendation is that for the latecomers, even if the fans are limited, they can still be favored by the recommendation engine based on the quality of the content and put the content in front of the target users. The primary purpose of content presentation is no longer to attract users’ subscription attention, but to “grass grass”, urging users to take immediate action and directly convert into transactions. This is especially obvious in the field of short video and live broadcast, because these two types of content forms are not long-term users.
From CPM to CPA/CPS
So, at the moment, the content traffic is self-produced and sold, and the pursuit of “explosion” directly hits CPA/CPS (follow-up actions or sales), which is the most commercialized way to get ads, and earn CPM (pay per display ) A little mean selling traffic. Of course, there is noFor commercialized business, content is the business situation, and advertising revenue is always better than no revenue.
For the combination of content and business, CPA/CPS is actually not very accurate, because you don’t need to settle revenue with others. All the traffic brought by the content is realized in your own conversion funnel. This is also the reason why traditional subscription eco-content producers and platforms do not like receiving CPA/CPS advertisements because of the long billing cycle, uncontrollable effects, and the possibility of stealing.
So I accompany several friends around me to do content, first because they are senior enough in their respective fields to output high-quality content; secondly, their business model is suitable for using content to attract transactions, and there is an urgent breakthrough in the existing The desire for business scale. And, because everyone is a friend and has a foundation of trust, it avoids the problem of profit distribution to the greatest extent.
Finally, based on the operation experience in the past six months, I will comment on the status of several content distribution channels that I think are okay.
Headline: The user base is high and the quality is good, which is the first choice for the distribution of graphic content.
Zhuhu: The only platform with good traffic performance in the three aspects of searching inside and outside the site, subscribing on the site, and recommending on the site, and started in the knowledge sharing scene. The readers have a high transaction rate after being planted with grass. Suitable for graphic, in-depth professional content distribution.
Douyin: The user base is high and active, and is the first choice for short video content distribution. It is convenient to hang shops to bring goods.
Xiaohongshu: It is suitable for the distribution of vertical short video content of beauty and maternal and child categories, and it is suitable for private transactions.
Baijiahao: Based on Baidu’s search traffic, there is still a certain distribution capacity, and graphic content can be done.
WeChat public account: We must have a WeChat public account for graphic content to serve users who have already absorbed it on their personal WeChat. But relying on social distribution is not cost-effective for pulling new ones.
Note that this article discusses “should”, not “how.” For different businesses, and the characteristics of the recommended algorithms on each platform, it is difficult to give a uniform answer.
And, doing content is a bit like fitness, and there is no chance to see the output in the early stage. Whether the individual is suitable, and how to persevere, this is not a problem I can solve.
Extended reading:
Talk about ways to make money by knowing traffic
Judgment: Senior product manager, author of Tiger Sniff 2017 and 2019. WeChat public account: the old driver of the judge (ID: panguansays), author of the book “Product Awakening”