They said: Graphics and text self-media is no longer viable

Does self-media still have a chance? Many companies and operators may want to know the answer to this question. In this article, the author explains the logic and business model of the self-media track. Let's take a look.

They said: “Is it impossible to do self-media anymore?”

I think it’s just the beginning.

Recently, I heard some account owners and matrix bosses complain: it is becoming increasingly difficult to get advertisements, soft articles, and business orders. There was not much business in the first quarter, and there doesn’t seem to be any improvement in the second quarter. Is there any need to persevere?

Moreover, the investment cost is very high, including maintaining a team, data maintenance, content creation, and community operation. The investment is at least 100,000 yuan a month, and there is no money to be made at all.

This situation is not only in the public account ecosystem, but also the same for other picture, text, and video bloggers. Except for Xiaohongshu, which has some long-tail effects, bloggers on other platforms are not very prosperous.

I worked in e-commerce before, not for many years, but I led the marketing department for 7 years. So, I am more sensitive to how to spend money and have some knowledge about it. I think: never live in fantasy, always thinking about using data to lock trends, seeing what others do, and then following suit.

To be honest, big companies such as Alibaba, Baidu, and ByteDance previously had some marketing budgets, but now they have been reduced a lot.

Some companies have figured out the media's routines and know how to lick the boots. For each press conference, they just invite some self-media and give them a spot. Many people rush to the event. It looks very glorious on the surface, but actually there is not much money to be made.

Small and medium-sized enterprise services (B2B) are not doing well right now, facing triple pressures: labor productivity, customer renewal rates, and technological change. Each one is a headache. Bosses even have to rely on training and consulting to make money, and have no advertising budget at all.

The bosses who sell products to consumers (TOC) have all gone live personally because they want to see the return on investment (ROI) directly. The on-screen anchors who don’t do the live broadcast themselves make 200 yuan an hour in pursuit of transaction efficiency. Anyway, they basically don’t do business that doesn’t make money.

Therefore, my conclusion is that everyone will have a hard time in the second half of the year. Some self-media bloggers and matrix companies will go bankrupt because of unstable cash flow. Party A will no longer invest money, and even if there is some budget, it will be used cautiously.

So, here comes the question: Do we-media still have a chance? In the context of rapid iteration of technology-driven content, what are the key points in this round of reshuffle? What will we fight for in the future? Do we really need to generate electricity for love?

01

Actually, it is not necessary. Let us first clarify: what is generating electricity for love?

Last year I posted a sentence in my circle of friends, the original meaning was: If you want to be a boss and start a business, you will make money once you are specific, but once you make money and start pursuing emotions, you will lose money.

Why?

The reason is simple. Sentiments are generated by love. The so-called love means doing something out of passion and persistence. This passion can make the soul freer, more interesting, and achieve greater achievements.

Are you a person who does self-media for love? I am not. Compare and see, if you are not one of them, then, be less sentimental and return to the other side of love: cold and rational business.

When talking about business, one word is indispensable: the essence of business. I hate this word that is used so often, but I still want to talk about it because many people don’t know what the essence of business is. It comes down to two elements: value creation and value exchange.

What does it mean?

Creation means that I can identify market demand and meet it; exchange means that the created value is provided to customers, and they pay you or me in exchange for services.

So, what is the value creation of self-media? Don't worry, I have summarized it. There are seven points in total: content production, information dissemination, opinion expression, community building, brand building, educational inspiration, and entertainment companionship. This is not difficult to understand.

Let's define users as readers and customers as people who pay for products (brands, B-end, small B). Which one do you think is more important to users? To customers?

The result is very direct. Readers are more interested in the expression of information and entertainment, as well as whether they can learn something. These factors directly focus on user experience and stickiness, and the display indicators are: reading volume, likes, and forwarding volume.

Those who pay the bill are more concerned about whether the information can help me build my brand and let my customers know what I have done. They are more concerned about the type of content output and the efficiency of dissemination, because they directly affect the effectiveness of product promotion in the market and commercial returns.

Therefore, users focus on the refreshing and inspiring content, while customers focus on the effect. In this case, let's talk about the effect. What is a good effect?

Back to the business level, there is only one indicator: the customer takes what he wants ; however, as a self-media author or commercial media, you cannot only focus on what the customer wants, but also pay attention to user experience. What do you think we should do?

Change your way of thinking.

The essence of making pictures, texts and videos is that the platform provides a stage for creators, and creators have to make programs. Programs are the key to attracting audiences, but they are not the ultimate indicator.

Just like the recently popular "Singer 2024" is a program of Hunan Satellite TV, and Hunan Satellite TV is a platform. Therefore, when doing self-media, you should think about how to make programs to help clients attract the audience they want.

Your column is your show. For example:

"Business Insights", "Live Streaming E-Commerce", "Non-standard Business Research", "30 Lectures on Private Domains". Once the content is confirmed, the presentation method is what you see, including short videos, pictures and texts.

Here comes the question: We have produced many programs before, why were the results not good?

In the past, when I was working in self-media, I was eager to express my opinions. No matter which business track, as long as I could provide analysis, comparison, different angles, and sharp comments that made people feel good, I could bring in traffic.

Readers think you performed well, and customers will pay because the ideas are effective. This is a simple truth.

It’s different now. Almost everyone has an opinion. Even if you don’t have an opinion, if you give the question to AI, it can come up with 10 for you in one minute. Therefore, opinion programs are not very effective. Moreover, some people have learned to interpret opinions in exchange for traffic, which is too bad.

I watch videos and visit various websites, and I feel like there are ads everywhere. Many of the content has many problems. If you look closely, 90% of it is wrong, and many of them are taken out of context and one-sided, even many professional contents are wrong.

Don’t assume that just because something looks very professional it must be correct. If you look closely you will find that there are problems with the data and opinions cited.

for example:

There are five views on something in the academic community. In order to prove their point, they choose the least reliable one and then make up some similar data. If you don't check, you won't find it.

Therefore, it is not that the author’s content is bad, but that opinion programs have become rotten.

02

So, have you ever thought about what makes a good program? I think that since it is a business, the word "good" is a bit too exaggerated, and "profitable" is more accurate.

If the goal is to focus on data such as reading volume, number of fans, and forwarding, then it is definitely useful for the C-end. However, do you know that these data are no longer important evaluation indicators in the B2B track? I am not saying that paying users do not look at the data, but that they do not look at it completely or look at it more savvy.

Take the picture and text as an example:

Some B-side bosses I have contacted know that there is an indicator called "frequent readers" in the background of the official account. If an article has more than 50,000 reads, there are only less than 5,000 regular readers. Who are they trying to fool?

There is information asymmetry, and not everyone knows this. However, the core point I want to make is: do the right thing and make the data better. If the data gets better, it is not because the essence of the matter has improved, then the data becomes a sinful monster.

Don't do superficial work for the sake of data. There is no need. Now that you understand this, have you ever thought about whether the program should be adjusted? So, what kind of programs do audiences like to watch and customers pay for? There are two points: one, facts, and two, real experience.

For example:

Big models are very popular this year. For B-side enterprises such as finance, education, medical care, and manufacturing, they never care about how big models write poems or paint, but focus on the productivity improvement brought about by business scenarios.

B-side enterprises have rich application scenarios and a large amount of domain data, and can give full play to the capabilities of large models. They have a strong demand for cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and attach great importance to the security of domain data. This is the essential difference between domain cognitive intelligence construction and C-side large model applications.

I don't know if you have studied it seriously, but as long as it involves the industry, professional content is hard to find in the wide range of institutional media, because the content has returned to the small circle. Institutional media or new self-media mostly require light content and pay more attention to the greatest common divisor.

What is the greatest common divisor?

Simply put, the more efficient the communication is, the more people read it. On the contrary, the more people read it, the lighter the content is. Even if some content seems to be forwarded a lot, there are few truly effective customers, so the communication efficiency is actually very low.

I once wrote an article for a technology company. The CMO said that I didn’t have to write it according to the media attributes. My goal was to let potential customers understand what the software solved. Reading time was not important.

So, what is the role of commercial self-media for the B-side?

There are two points. First, it should become a professional vertical platform, connecting experts and specific people so that everyone can connect with each other and gain real experience. Second, it should provide powerful and in-depth forward-looking content from the front line.

Please note that the foresight I mentioned does not represent an opinion. It means to experience the industry and know who the competitors are and where each company differentiates itself, rather than just a superficial analysis.

There are many people who write about marketing, but few of them can actually take away and put the knowledge into practice; there are also many people who write about organization and management, but few of them can actually do it after reading it.

Therefore, good programs are based on facts, real knowledge, and real experience. If the content is not good, it is an outdated way to rely on traffic. You must have users and customers in mind to sustain your business.

03

The reason for saying this is that the business model has essentially changed.

What's the meaning?

In the past five years, if you have an account with 1 million followers and 50 million traffic per month, what would you do? Don't think too much, just play games every day like the anchors of League of Legends, post a link, sell cookies to attract traffic, and you can make money.

When I was doing advertising, the change that impressed me the most was that the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of advertising was 10 yuan. What does 10 yuan mean?

If a video is played 1,000 times, you can earn 10 yuan. At that time, the average CPM was 15 yuan, and in the second half of the year, the price skyrocketed from 50 yuan to 60 yuan, and finally to 300 yuan.

CPM300 means that a video can earn 300 yuan if it is played 1,000 times. This means that brand owners are willing to pay more for every 1,000 plays, which also shows that the advertising value of the platform has greatly increased.

In other words, the entire market pays more attention to traffic and attention economy.

As a KOL, someone who can control real traffic, if a video is released and has 100,000 views on Douyin or Kuaishou, the revenue is huge, and you can thrive with product promotion and advertising. Moreover, at that time, brand owners had money, and using capital to exchange traffic represented improved efficiency and grabbed market share, which was not a bad thing.

Now, everyone pays more attention to management.

What is management? To be in charge of a business independently and take full responsibility for it. How is its development trend in terms of timeline? How is its overall impact? How should we deal with the massive changes and uncertainties we face every day? This is management.

Do you think this is nonsense? Let me give you an example:

Now you have 100,000 yuan to spend on brand promotion, what would you do? I guess you would not just spend it casually, but think about: where are the customers? After the promotion, can they see it? What if they can't see it?

Although the competition seems fierce, it is actually easier to do self-media because you can study an industry steadily, which will attract more professionals.

If you can stop and study the courses, supply chain and products, and open up the basic traffic pool, you can fully realize personal business monetization. WeChat Pay, Douyin Pay and Alipay all provide complete payment methods, and will help you deduct taxes and eliminate tax risks.

If you are even more powerful and can provide consulting services or other products, self-media will be your amplifier, allowing your brand to go further and bigger, and leveraging traffic at low cost.

You may think that there are too many people and the competition is too fierce. In fact, most people in the market are competing at a low level. Don’t always focus on a few top accounts. Most people lack industry capabilities and have little competitiveness.

In addition, many big accounts, although they have millions of data volumes and fans, they produce content in a mass-produced manner and are simply unable to take into account both verticality and details.

This is a good opportunity.

You don't need to have a lot of fans, as long as you are focused and vertical, and your fans trust you, and build a closed-loop business model, you can at least support yourself and even get a good side job.

Therefore, in an era of individualism, we have perfect conditions. What we need to do is to show our professionalism and sincerity to the world. If you can earn 100,000 or 200,000 yuan by taking an advertisement, that is based on professionalism.

So, when the number of readings and likes cannot be converted into direct benefits, calm down and think about what you will pursue as a reader? What will you pursue as a boss? Maybe you will focus more on the content itself. Think about it, right?

If you think a job is hard, is it really that hard? Or is it because you are not putting enough effort into it? Often, the reason you laugh at or look down on things is because you have only a limited understanding of them or are not willing to put in the effort to study them.

Think about all of this clearly. Whether you are making pictures, texts or videos, this is just the beginning.

In summary

Do small things well and focus on the specifics.

There is a term called group polarization. Simply put, when an issue is raised to group discussion, people tend to strengthen their positive or negative views on certain things. Perhaps they should take a step back and focus on specific things, which can be more meaningful.

The pain is because we spend too much energy on the uncertain distance and ignore the ground under our feet. This sentence is based on factual opinions. After reading this, will you still do self-media?

Author: Wang Zhiyuan, public account: Wang Zhiyuan