How do text media push podcasts? "Reporter" Liu Zhixin: The establishment of production process and brand image should be consistent

On April 26th, the independent online media "Focus Event" held a discussion on "What should the media do in the post-Facebook era?" and invited Liu Zhixin, the deputy editor-in-chief of another independent text media "Reporter", who had previously launched a podcast and was well received. , to share the mental journey of crossover from text media to the realm of voice and escape from Facebook's algorithm.

Sun Qiongli, the founder of "Focus Incident", said at the opening that now in the community, every group and individual can speak their own voice. reporting, and developing more and different things, but this often makes the article very technical, contextual, and hard to read. So their dilemma is, how do they keep these hard messages alive?

Sun Qiongli further pointed out that on Facebook, everyone wants to "jump the boat" and find more possibilities in other media, but when looking for new media, each medium has a suitable form, such as podcast is sound, Youtube It is a video, and even Twitter and Facebook, which are also social platforms, have different forms. On blog platforms such as medium or matter, the audience is also different from Facebook. For example, in the previous four referendums, "Focus Events" also raised a lot of views on energy, but these messages could not get out, which gave them deep anxiety.

Liu Zhixin shared his previous experience when "The Reporter" stepped into podcasts, saying that the following sharing is his personal opinion, and does not represent the "Reporter" as a whole. Before doing podcasts at the beginning, the marketing department sent out a questionnaire, and 95% of the respondents asked The Reporter to do podcasts, but considering that there are not many people in The Reporter, it is impossible to force products that do not meet the needs; he What we need to consider is how to gradually reduce the cost and gradually enlarge the benefit. In the future, even if the key person like him is not there, it will continue to operate. Due to his previous experience in serving venture capital companies, he used many foreign research reports to make market assessments, including retention rate (how many audiences can listen to the whole process), conversion rate (donations that can be brought), etc.

Liu Zhixin said that in the process of analyzing the questionnaires, they also found that those who originally wrote the questionnaires did not necessarily read the articles of "Reporter". They may want to read but don't have time to read them, so they "knock on the bowl" to hope They take the form of sound. When researching the audience, it was also found that the age group of the podcast listeners was actually lower than that of the original readers of The Reporter. Therefore, for them, they were readers of a new age group. Listening on the commute, not the same as text) is also new, so their expectations from The Reporter are completely different. From interaction to topic selection, and how to tell the story, all have to be taken into account.

Liu Zhixin emphasized that when creating new products, we should pay attention to the opinions provided by professionals, consumers' information, and which mainstream products are online, etc., which always need to be revised on a rolling basis. When doing cross-media, we should also pay attention to "whether the brand can be consistent", not after cross-platform, the same media "like different people", so as to let readers know what to expect, and this is a test of the team. Horizontal communication. Also consider whether the organization has so many talents? Are you willing to meet the challenges brought back by the platforms? It is not that the more platforms you open, the more points you can get.

"Focus" reporter Wang Zihao asked, when "Reporter" launched podcasts, how to solve the existing problem of increasing the workload of reporters? Liu Zhixin responded that it is important to communicate with the insiders. He made the beta version first, and kept making corrections during the process. Communicating with the insiders was a trial process. He also started the production process himself to reduce the cost of everyone's work as much as possible; for example, in terms of copywriting, he made multiple versions first, and let the colleagues who took over to choose, so that the pressure was relatively small at the beginning. They are also in the process, from the script, the host's voice, the dialogue, the sound elements, the story, etc., to slowly know what methods are available to keep the audience.

In addition, considering that podcasts are different from text audiences, only a part of the long-form text features of The Reporter will be made into podcasts. Liu Zhixin believes that text and sound are not necessarily to be compared, and it is not a pity because a lot of text is written, but only a part of the podcast is selected. As for the effectiveness, Liu Zhixin said that after the launch of the podcast, the regular quota of "The Reporter" has increased, but he does not think this is brought about by a single product, but an overall accumulation.

On the other hand, regarding the content format of "Focus Incident", the reporter asked, when "Focus Incident" was first launched, the original feature was rich infographics, which was very helpful for people who want to understand and get started with the issue, but why has it gradually changed in recent years? few? Sun Qiongli responded that the lack of stability has always been a problem of "Focus Incident". Diagramming is not part of the standard flow of work, resulting in sometimes and sometimes not.

On the other hand, he believes that the focus of diagrams is not on drawing, but on how to conceive later. Therefore, it is difficult to find a way to cooperate with artists. In addition, some themes are very abstract, so it is not easy to express them with diagrams. The current attempt of "Focus Event" is to make a live broadcast first, and then turn it into an audio and video clip, and try to combine the content with the dynamic image; Sun Qiongli also mentioned that Liu Zhixin mentioned earlier that the production process should be standardized, which gave him a lot of inspiration. , he also thinks that something must be done first, but it cannot always be done by himself.