Does the media have to find a location? Make a character? Engage in traffic?

Yesterday, a friend left me a message under the article "Dialogue with Huawei Employees" :

In fact, I don't know whether to be happy or sad when I saw this message. Because when I was writing this article, I didn't think about whether the topic would bring traffic at all. After chatting, I hurried home, and all I thought was, "I have to quickly sort out today's conversation. Strike while the iron is hot and record it."

In order to try my best to recall everything my eldest brother said to me at that time, it took me two days before and after to finish writing this article. At that moment, I collapsed on the sofa happily. Because these conversations brought me great inspiration and shock, I don't want the content to stay at the moment of the conversation, and the memory will gradually dissipate over time.

I write a lot of things like this. I have a document on the knowledge planet, which records the conversations and content between me and different people in detail, some of them are public on some social platforms, and some are only posted on my own planet:

Most of the articles on my official account are long articles, and the average reading data is about 1,000. There is no traffic creation. Every article is a record and creation from the heart. The moment I stopped writing, I was satisfied. Because I create a piece of content that has long-term value.

Therefore, in response to this comment, I have written a public account for several years, and I also want to share my humble opinion on the relationship between content creation and traffic .

(1)

First of all, I always feel that long articles and good articles sometimes may not really have a strong relationship with "traffic" (reading volume).

Sharing my own experience from the perspective of a content consumer, I have read many blogs and books with very high-quality and in-depth content, but these content are very poorly known among mainstream platforms and crowds.

Including me, I often receive comments below my own podcasts or articles, and strangers leave a message saying: "Why is such good content not popular?"

I don't find it strange at all.

Everyone knows that if you send a photo of a handsome man and a beautiful woman, traffic will take off quickly, but is this considered good content? The answer speaks for itself.

The WeChat public account has been used by me as a network form in the era of blog 1.0 and 2.0.

I like to write QQ space in junior high school. The style of the content can refer to the previous "New Concept Composition":

Don't be afraid of ridicule, this paragraph is taken from my QQ space, written in middle school, these "emotional piles" of words, the response was very good at that time. Therefore, emotional text can almost take all of many people.

The sentimental style of writing is attributed to the fact that he read too many painful literature and ancient novels back then, plus his early love, so that the style of writing is mainly lyrical. Looking at the text from more than ten years ago now, although I feel naive, I am also glad that I wrote down some of the feelings back then, which gave me the memory seasoning to travel back in time and recall the past.

At that time, there was Song Zude in my QQ space visit record, and the page views of my space articles were completely greater than the page views of my official account articles. In the past, I clearly held the traffic password in my hand, but what did I know at that time.

In middle school, I read a lot of books, and I also love writing. My writing in Chinese is always a score item, and I have won many awards. The love and passion for these two things, looking back today, has never changed.

Without exception, these contents are my recent thoughts, the inspiration brought to me by the little things in my life, the experience of a certain stage of my life, the inspiration that comes out again and again, and the dialogue with friends. The sudden enlightenment after the intracranial orgasm...

And these inspirations, thoughts, ideas, and experiences, I don't want them to exist only in that moment. I have to capture and record them, and uphold the clumsy idea of "a good memory is not as good as a bad writing" that the elementary school teacher repeatedly warned me, as myself The content and materials that review and understand the past can make me recall the scenes at that time in the long days to come. This feeling is really full, very warm and very happy.

If you lived through the pre-2010 blogging era, you generally felt a certain purity and friendliness of the internet at the time. At all, no one will come to the bottom of your article and tell you, "You wrote this for traffic." At that time, words such as "traffic" had not yet been born, let alone widespread popularity.

In my day and age, computers were considered a luxury. Not every family in the same class has a computer, and many students have to go to other people's homes to use the computer to surf the Internet.

On the one hand, I was lucky, my mother did not reject my computer dream. When others were using computers with big square heads, my mother still used her meager salary to buy me a computer with an LCD screen, which was at the time. It will be nearly 6,000 yuan, around 2004.

However, this computer not only helped me to provide conditions for blog reading and blog writing in that era, but also allowed me to come into contact with a series of overseas products such as Google, Facebook, ICQ, etc. at a very young age, and the contact with overseas products also virtually helped me. Learning English and browsing English readings add great motivation.

With the development of the times, the innovation of smart phones, and the gradual disappearance of the blog form, the mobile Internet and endless APPs have emerged, providing convenience for users who cannot afford PC computers.

Classical Internet content creation forms gradually dissipated and eliminated in the wind. Some famous community forums such as Xici Hutong, Tianya, Maopu, etc. have all withdrawn from the stage of history, and the tools for carrying content have begun to change.

There are pros and cons to change.

"Benefit" means that the cost of people's channels and means of obtaining information is constantly being reduced. Some users with poor economic level can also see the wonderful online world just like everyone else. The information distribution mode of the Internet has changed, from "one-to-many" to "many-to-many", and the right to speak is gradually conveyed to the public.

However, a coin has both heads and tails. The greater the "pros", the more obvious the "cons"

The sharp drop in the cost of Internet access will inevitably lead to uneven quality of netizens, and the transfer of the right to speak will also exacerbate the dilution and flooding of high-quality content.

Everyone has a microphone, and everyone can hold a microphone to publish and disseminate information, but in the same way, not everyone has a sense of responsibility for content output and information dissemination.

Because the Internet is like a virtual mask, covering everyone who publishes information, as long as there is an invisible space, the cost of doing evil will naturally be reduced accordingly. Violent words, excessive speculation, rhythm, war and other cyber violence incidents are emerging one after another. .

(2)

In 2011, WeChat was born, and then the WeChat public account came into being, which opened a way for ordinary people to express themselves.

Gradually, the official account has become a necessity for most people's mobile phones. As long as you use WeChat, you will inevitably come into contact with the official account, so the development and exploration of the official account towards commercialization is naturally a matter of course.

As a person who has been writing logs in QQ space since the classical Internet era, the birth of WeChat public account is not much different from QQ space in my eyes. It is also regarded by me as a space that allows me to write and create as much as I want, which is my own space.

Therefore, I just see the official account as a continuation of the blog era.

It’s like the people who used QQ in the past have migrated to WeChat one after another. Similarly, writing on the WeChat public account is not much different from writing in QQ space for me.

So when did the word "flow" start appearing in my life?

When I was an intern in Zhejiang Daily in my junior year, I just happened to catch up with the internal transformation of the newspaper and embrace the Internet, so I was fortunate to have access to the new media official account.

It was around 2014, and the account leader I was in charge of asked me to make a data table every week to export data such as titles, readings, and likes, and let me analyze articles with good traffic and articles with poor traffic. Differences, etc., my understanding of the public account has changed.

Then, after graduation, I went to an Internet company to do operations. Every Monday, I had to hold a topic selection meeting, vote, decide the topic, and execute it. Therefore, the official account can naturally be viewed in a serious business form—

For example, some commercial team organizations need to hold a topic selection meeting once a week to confirm the content topics of each week, the reasons for topic selection, evaluate topic keywords and the popularity of keywords in the recent Internet search index, etc.

Since my job is to serve the team, serve the company, and help the company to amplify the brand effect through the Internet and achieve market influence, then I must maintain a "traffic thinking".

Go back and talk about my own account and say something embarrassing. I write articles for others, I contribute articles on other platforms, and I build accounts for other companies from 0 to 1. The data and traffic from 0 to 1 are all dumped from my own official account. N times, not to mention the realization, the single article of the cooperation fee that I have received starts from 5 digits.

But if you look at the situation of my own public account, the registration time is 2014, and the average reading of the article is about 1,000 for many years, which is extremely stable.

Thinking according to the way of doing traffic, I should not be Buddhist in the first place, at least the update frequency must be guaranteed, current affairs hotspots must be kept up, and business BD must take the initiative, but I can’t do anything about my account. At the time of posting, I create casually, and most of the content is nothing more than my own experience and thinking.

So, someone might ask: "Don't you want traffic?"

If I have to use the cold word "traffic" as a reference for users who follow my content, I can't agree emotionally. After all, I still have the ancient blog era in my mind, and almost no bloggers will use "" Traffic Thinking" to describe their followers.

What I really want is not traffic either. Instead, I hope to have more people like the big brother Huawei who contacted me through the official account and took the initiative to meet with me to share his own life experiences and thoughts.

Having one more similar friend and teacher in my life is of great value to me through content. Compared with the so-called "flow", this value benefits for a lifetime, while the latter is unsustainable and unattainable.

Furthermore, if I have to sum up "people" with "traffic", then I don't want junk traffic to come into my small account at all.

When some inexplicable person comes to leave a message under my content, attacking me by saying things like "title party", "establishing people", "to earn traffic" and so on, I feel speechless and helpless when I look at it.

Because you don't know the level of cultural upbringing of these strangers, nor the real background of these people, they are like faceless people with masks, using their own set of judgment logic to randomly label you a few times, Then slap the butt irresponsibly and leave.

However, the blame cannot be placed on them.

Now people's consciousness is engulfed by various "traffic thinking" on the Internet, so that when they see some content, they subconsciously feel that some content is "title party", "earning traffic", "concave person design", with a kind of "you think I Don't know about self-media? I've seen through you a long time ago." With a smug attitude.

In this regard, I can only say: "Okay, congratulations on seeing through."

It is undeniable that some teams need to achieve business goals, and they need to have such traffic thinking in content production. However, when I come back to my small account, all the content is under my own control and responsibility. Someday I will have inspiration. Then write a little, and if you don't feel like writing all month, don't.

I'm really tolerant of myself, because I really don't rely on the logic of large traffic to receive external advertisements to support myself, otherwise the three melons and two dates in the public account advertisements will directly make me starve to death on the street, and I will die for an extra small amount of money. income.

(3)

So, isn't it bad to write for traffic? How do you think about it?

I personally think that "traffic" and "writing" are definitely not a matter of your own death. As a creator, you need to figure out what the purpose of your "creation" is? The more honest and candid the better.

If the purpose of your "creation" is to make money, and you see that those who engage in self-media on the Internet are earning a lot of money and are glamorous, then when you decide to create from the beginning, make sure that you have a strong goal. Yes, how many fans do you have to get in xx month, and then start to realize it.

If the purpose of your "creation" is to express your thoughts, hone your writing skills, and make friends because of the content, then you should put aside your "traffic thinking" a little bit, because it is easy to get lost in the pursuit of hot topics and topics. Lose the original intention of creation.

Of course, some friends said, then I can't have both?

There are indeed such people, but you will find that there are really very few people looking at the market. Moreover, the strength, background, and luck of these people may not be copied by ordinary people.

As an ordinary person, if you really want to be a self-media, you really don’t want to think about “both and want” at the beginning, and a clear path will make you feel much more comfortable in the future.

I have helped some clients operate Xiaohongshu before, and I have written a lot of posts with thousands of likes. The hot spot is really a basic one, but my own account is not like this, because everyone's "purpose" "is different.

At the very beginning, the client’s demands were the starting number, large traffic and exposure, and the purpose would push the presentation form of the content backwards. I have to pull the client to do every link of topic selection, direction, release frequency, and review. After all, I serve customers, and naturally I can't do it in the way I treat my account.

My account appeal is not to “enhance traffic”. It’s good to make money on the official account, but it’s okay if I can’t, because whether I make money or not will not affect my continuous recording and output, as well as my enthusiasm for creation, even after writing articles for so many years, I have been in the In a tepid state, I didn't feel discouraged and wanted to give up, because I just love to write .

Every time I write down what I have seen, heard, experienced, felt and thought, and the moment I hit the last punctuation mark on the keyboard, I am extremely proud and full of a sense of accomplishment. If at this time, a reader happens to take the initiative to tell me to get new knowledge from the article and express gratitude, then this kind of positive feedback will motivate me to improve myself and provide more valuable content. That's it.

However, do I really only get one of fish and bear's paw? Obviously not.

Although I have been writing for so long and the amount of reading is average, it can even be said that in the world of "traffic thinking", I am about to be eliminated because there is no such thing as commercial value, but I want to say something frankly: "Not any content business model follows the logic of "traffic thinking". " That's just part of the business model, it's not everything.

In the beginning, it's important to be clear about your motives.

The order of my thinking on this matter was purely my desire to share my thoughts before some unexpected possibilities emerged.

The output of the content of the official account has helped me link to one excellent friend after another. And in the process, I will have some cooperative relationship with them. For example, consulting services, resource docking, coaching, business cooperation, etc., and the logical difference between these and the so-called "traffic thinking" is very big.

Because my content is not vertical, there are mixed fish and dragons. I share conversations with others for a while, emotions for a while, investments for a while, travel for a while... This is a qualified idea of making a traffic account.

Everyone listens to the IP courses on the market. The first course requires you to have a clear positioning and vertical content. You can flip through my account casually, and the content and topics are too scattered. I have friends who have been MCN institutions before, so I am euphemistic. Expressed: "The topic of your official account is too scattered, I can't catch the main point at all."

But this is my style. I can write whatever I want on my own account. It is precisely because I have the right to create freely, so that even today, my creative enthusiasm has not been exhausted, but has intensified. But if I follow the theory of traffic, character design, and content verticality, many of my facets will be castrated, so how can I show my truth and integrity?

I have to talk about commonality. In fact, all my enthusiasm for content creation is inseparable from topics such as self-education, self-reflection, criticism, and speculation, but these topics are precisely the paradoxes in the world of "traffic thinking". After all, the essence of learning and reflection is It’s all anti-human, and emotions and entertainment tend to have larger traffic pools.

(4)

So, even if I write my own content in the style of free creation instead of traffic thinking, even if the articles I write are so long that most people have no patience to read the content, and the content is anti-human, does it really mean that there is no such content as me? Is there a business opportunity?

The answer is of course No. There are also many unexpected opportunities by writing the content that you like.

Some friends, after reading the experience and work experience in a certain period of time I shared before, judged that I might have some resources he needed, and would directly contact me for docking, and some friends would choose to trust me because of my content. Come to me for content-related coaching to hone your cognitive and thinking skills.

Including the former Philosophy teacher from the High School Affiliated to Peking University, I gave an educational seminar related to "Turning Point" together , which also received feedback and praise from users. , "Logical Speculation" and other content will continue to advance. And these are all amplified by the platform (leverage) of the official account article through my own capabilities, resources, and contacts.

Another reason why I don't choose to adopt "traffic thinking" is that I know that everyone sees the world, others, problems, and content from different perspectives. This is another backlash that traffic will bring to creators——

When the exposure is large enough, you never know who will stab you in the dark corner with a sharp bayonet without knowing it. This kind of situation is constantly being played out by some of my self-media big V friends around me.

From another perspective, when you really decide to create your own IP for the purpose of traffic commercialization, can you really afford the cost of exposure? Bloody examples have occurred several times this year.

If you are very clear that you want to take this road now, then follow the flow gameplay to verify your business trading ability.

On the contrary, if you want to do like me with the content you love, the content you recognize, and hope to use good content to polish your thinking, precipitate your own thinking, and let others gain something, then calm down and keep a record little by little And share, don't be kidnapped by the "traffic thinking" in the market to make your content.

Sometimes, your sincere, natural, undemanding attitude can bring you extra surprises instead. This is really different from the traffic thinking that forcibly follows a set of conventional templates, such as positioning first and then establishing people.

For example, Lao Yu, the person in charge of the public account "Lonely Brain", is the best example in my opinion. He has been writing for three years in the field of thinking he is interested in, but almost no one cares about it. But today's results, you can also see Here we go, let's build up. The experience he told me back then has stuck in my heart to this day.

Therefore, I always believe that the shortcut is often the furthest road. If you want to walk the road steadily and solidly, you can't be in a hurry.

At the same time, when the value you give can really help others and solve their problems, then the exchange of value and the establishment of trust will naturally occur, which is similar to the idea of content production purely for the purpose of "traffic". not the same.

Finally, if you are not a creator, but a consumer of the content world, then I think when you see some content, the reading data is very high, and you focus on thinking that "the purpose of creators writing is for "traffic"" , which is unreasonable.

I remembered that I was watching Thirteen Invitation a while ago, and the content of Xu Zhiyuan's interview with Mr. Liu Qing was wonderful and in-depth, but there were always some people in the comment area who were scolding "Liu Qing" for traffic and commercial interests.

Before he recorded the 13th Invitation, I was fortunate to have a conversation with Mr. Liu Qing offline. He is an extremely humble person. Whether he treats our juniors or the staff, he is polite and asks himself from time to time where he is not doing enough. Well, will it bother others, etc. During the chat, his listening ability is also very strong, but it is precisely by seeing it with his own eyes and talking in person that he has a more profound understanding of how terrifying the maliciousness and ill-will of the current public opinion environment.

I still can't understand why the content that obviously benefits people a lot, in the eyes of some people, there is no so-called "benefiting a lot", only the other party wants to cut your leeks and make your money.

If truly rewarding content can help creators reap the rewards for their domain expertise, why not? You get free information, and ta gets paid knowledge in return. No matter what, it is not a person who only knows how to ask and is ungrateful to comment on the fruits of others' labor.

Writing to this day, if I want to get attention by writing inflammatory and emotional words, it is not difficult for me, but if these contents can only continue to create division and distrust, as an author, I only will be uneasy. My writing style is simple and bland, and the length of the article can dissuade a bunch of people, but it still does not affect my continuing to write my own stories and ideas.

Because writing not only affects my brain, it determines the way I think, and it even affects the kind of person I become. Since I know clearly what kind of person I want to become, why do I have to set up a personal design, and if it is not true, it will collapse sooner or later. Wouldn't it be better to slowly take notes in words and bring yourself closer to what you imagined.

I remembered that Teacher Cheng Jia introduced himself in "Nothing" and said, "I'm just a student." At that moment, I was stunned, thinking I heard it wrong. But when he looked at us with pious eyes and said:

"I think I'm just a student, and there are many teachers I can learn from, including you."

For someone who has achieved little in the industry, he still uses this attitude, let alone me who has no achievements. It is precisely this kind of people who are all around me, no matter Liu Qing, Cheng Jia, Lao Yu, Ge Xu... I would never think that these people write and output content for the sake of "traffic" and what kind of personality they want to set up.

If we have to forcibly answer the IP positioning of these people and their personalities, of course we can forcibly put a few labels, but in my heart they really shouldn’t be simply “flattened” and “labeled”, these people All of them are multi-faceted, diverse, multi-dimensional, and three-dimensional. It is an insult to apply IP thinking to them.

Therefore, to this day, these seniors and teachers who have always remained humble and created value for others are guiding me like the North Star. As educators, they are all in their own fields and tirelessly cultivate for decades. Then, As a younger generation, how could it be possible to forget the original intention of doing content and the responsibility to perform?

I have the thinking of a businessman and the cleanliness of a literati. But I never think the two are in conflict. There is nothing to be ashamed of by using your own abilities and strengths to make money that you are good at.

Money empathy is a positive feedback of value, and only if you have money can you buy more books, courses, experience more programs, and even I plan to study abroad after the age of 30 to apply for educational programs in the United States, all of which require money. Help me progress to a higher level.

As for whether it is really necessary to rely on "traffic" to make money, this question is a matter of opinion. I am not a freelancer who came out of the "traffic thinking" model, but this does not mean that these trivial and divergent contents of mine have not let me. I make money.

If you don’t like your content to go the “traffic” way, but you want to deliver value, then focus on doing what you like and are good at. Enthusiasm is the biggest motivation for doing things, continue to precipitate according to your own heart, and share your life and thinking sincerely and truthfully.

Although the data impact is not as strong as the former, but you can do this for a lifetime, and you can continue to reach the end of your life on this road. As for the accidents and surprises during the journey, they will appear sooner or later, so don’t be in a hurry.

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