Can soft articles also attract readers? Sanlian Commercial Content Team Reveals the Writing Rules of 'Explosive Press Releases'!

"It looks like an advertisement!"

"I watched it for a long time, it turned out to be an advertisement..."

"It turned out to be an advertisement, this advertisement is really well written!"

The above three reactions are different levels of business copywriting, which bring different feelings to readers. As the "Sanlian Life Weekly" team, which is deeply engaged in original and in-depth content and hard-hitting copywriting, most of the copywriting they write can make readers have a third reaction.

What is the writing concept and method of the Sanlian Commercial Content Team?

How to skillfully connect public sentiment with Party A's brand?

How to serve the "super difficult" Party A?

How to maintain creativity and enthusiasm in the high-speed work rhythm?

Financial Associated Press | The reporter talked to Shen Yichao, the customized content director of "Sanlian Life Weekly", and listened to his sharing team's "popular soft articles" writing rules.

Shen Yichao, Customized Content Director of "Sanlian Life Weekly"

Sanlian commercial content team "big family"

: Mr. Shen, please take "Relaxing Life, Beginning with the Gentleness of Watching a Drop of Water" as an example, and share its conception and writing process.

Shen Yichao: The article "Relaxed Life" is a collaboration between Sanlian and OPPO. The event is that OPPO will launch a new ColorOS 13 system at the developer conference in the near future. The other party's appeal in the "brief" is that the fully upgraded ColorOS 13 is based on the concept of "everything in water", draws inspiration from the source of life, and is committed to In order to bring users a dynamic, smooth, intelligent and reliable digital life experience. The other party hopes that the copywriting can explain OPPO's design concept, innovation and technology in detail, and the style of writing reflects Sanlian's usual humanistic feelings.

After the team got the "brief", they did three actions. The first step is to understand the core needs of customers and disassemble the concept that the brand wants to convey. This step is particularly important. It is related to whether the follow-up cooperation can be carried out smoothly and the overall presentation effect of the article. It is better to spend more time and communicate thoroughly.

In order to let customers have a clear concept of the effect of content presentation, the team will reflect one or more entry points, connection points between content and brand, writing logic and ideas, and the proportion of brand commercial content in the proposal.

The second step is to find the current social hot topics and emotional focus, and to find the connection point between the hard brief of customers and the soft emotions of the public, that is, to "align" business demands with media thinking. The source of inspiration for this OPPO product is water, which is a natural element and flows, giving people a sense of freedom and relaxation. In today's society, many young people are embracing nature, exercising outdoors, and even returning to the countryside to relieve their stress. "Flexible adjustment" and "relaxing life" are the connection points between the theme of the brand and the theme of the copywriting.

The third step is writing and polishing. The general writing technique of the triad is based on the perspective of the characters, and uses the real interview materials to present the thoughts and thoughts of the characters, extending from an individual story to a group portrait or a general social phenomenon.

When writing this article for OPPO, the team initially wanted to use the method of "narrating and discussing" to reflect people's solutions to the pressure of life in multiple dimensions, such as character stories, film and television works, books, and related theories. The taste of the book is a bit heavy, so it has been adjusted to the writing style that everyone sees now, with the character story as the main axis and more resonating with readers.

The operational cycle for such a manuscript is usually around 10 days. Among them, 2-3 days are used to give the outline, 3-5 days are used to complete the manuscript, and the last few days are used to modify and adjust according to customer feedback.

: How does the team gain insight and capture the pain points and needs of people in today's society, so as to choose the entry point of writing?

Shen Yichao: After a lot of review, the team found that there are three main types of entry points that have received the most praise on the official account.

One is social hot topics and emotional focus points, including women, education, workplace, anxiety, etc. The team will help people express their emotions by interpreting such hot topics, and then combine them with the brand.

The second category is character story manuscripts, including exclusive interviews and group interviews. The interview objects include KOLs, corporate executives, and amateurs with stories. The team has long-term cooperation with several leading Internet platforms in the content of "Bloggers and Characters"; the so-called "characters" is to deeply explore the characteristics of characters from the perspective of the media and amplify them, thereby further highlighting the value of the entire platform. .

The third category is based on the genes of the triplet and the soil of the founding of the publication—history, humanities and popular science to find an entry point and combine it with the brand. Many customers have the impression of Sanlian as "a media with profound cultural accumulation", and they will joke: "You are so 'cultural', help us to improve the brand tonality."

The above three categories belong to efficient "templates", which are used to ensure the stable performance and efficient production of the team. Of course, the essential action of the team every day is to keep watching and thinking more, and swiping more social platforms to see what everyone is discussing, and how everyone feels and recognizes these topics.

It should be noted that people of different ages, regions, occupations, and backgrounds will have very different views on the same topic. For example, second- and third-tier married women and first-tier single women will definitely have different mentalities. It is necessary to take care of these differences, and do not make generalizations to cause discomfort to readers.

In today's society, "spreading anxiety" seems to be a kind of "traffic password". When disseminating content for some industries, it is inevitable to talk about anxiety, and the overall tonality and values ​​of Sanlian happen to be "anti-anxiety". The team needs to find a balance between the two, so that everyone is aware of some real problems, don't run away, and don't be overly fearful.

: Will there be periods of burnout and depletion of inspiration when doing in-depth copywriting for a long time? How does the team stay creative and enthusiastic?

Shen Yichao: The main way to maintain creativity and enthusiasm is to maintain curiosity, love life, and actively experience life.

Most people who have been engaged in media for a long time, especially original content, are naturally sensitive and curious, and they generally like to analyze various phenomena and problems. For example, my colleagues and I will pay attention to and experience some popular lifestyles, such as physical and spiritual cultivation, outdoor sports and so on.

Everyone will keep reading, especially books on psychology, humanities and social sciences, so as to establish some theoretical frameworks to understand the public psychology more systematically. I am certified as a psychologist myself. In addition to understanding psychology and social science knowledge, everyone will even study the popular "mysterious powers" such as tarot cards.

Mr. Li Honggu, editor-in-chief of Sanlian Life Weekly, said that Sanlian journalists are characterized by curiosity, competitiveness and learning ability. Curiosity determines the enthusiasm for maintaining creativity and constantly expands new cognitive fields; Competitiveness determines the attitude and ability of writing.

In addition, the team also attaches great importance to life experience. I am convinced that writing in a room will not be able to write good things. Some time ago, the weekly held 1200 special issue group photo activities, and asked each department to take special themed group photos. Most of the people in our department love sports, and everyone also has their own favorite and good sports, so they planned a sports-themed group photo.

In this group photo, the most senior teacher in the department is the one who swings and jumps in the back row. He goes to play in the early morning at a fixed time every week. When everyone is sitting in the office at 10 o'clock, Teacher Lu has already played badminton for two hours. This perseverance shocked me; the girl in the dance pose in the back row is Cui Yu, the author of the OPPO manuscript. She wrote the theme of "relaxation". She was not relaxed for a while, and often canceled dance classes temporarily because she suddenly needed to deal with work. ; The person in the front row doing yoga is our "body and mind" master Siyu, who is currently researching healing recipes; and it's me who is punching, with this fierce look, everyone jokes that it is to deal with all kinds of tricky things all the time. Working conditions.

Triple commercial content team sports theme group photo

: Speaking of which, what interesting collisions have we had with Party A?

Shen Yichao: The daily work rhythm of the team is often taken away by Party A. For example, our team is not actually "rolling", but it is often taken by Internet giants. Dachang customers will say to us at 2 am: "Teacher, no matter how late the manuscript is, we will be waiting for you."

We have also learned a lot of so-called "Internet slang" from big Internet companies. The "character outreach" I mentioned earlier is an example. Now, the team has evolved from being confused to using these words with ease - "Come on, let's 'align' the requirements."

Another example is that most of the clients of foreign companies are "Buddha-like". When my colleagues ask the other party to confirm the manuscript, they have to ask the other party to work overtime on weekends. We will also urgently say: "Hurry up and fix it, and wait until 6 o'clock, and the client will be gone after get off work!"

The "office table (bookshelf)" in the office is filled with the surrounding of the team and the cooperative brands, bless the success of manuscripts

: Have you ever had a dispute with Party A? How does the team coordinate properly?

Shen Yichao: Bugs may appear in any link. First of all, bugs may appear in "unknown customer needs", the team will communicate repeatedly about this, and give specific articles to the other party for reference.

Bugs may appear in "insufficient interview materials, no dry goods, and poor results." In this case, the team will urgently find other interviewees, or use writing skills to polish the interview content.

Bugs may appear in "unclear customer feedback", that is, hearing customers say: "I don't have enough depth to impress me", but the other party can't point out the specific deficiencies. The team will take the initiative to modify the operation method for this, so that the other party can form a concrete imagination and concept.

Bugs may also appear in "Party A's internal disagreement", "entangled in typesetting"... There is a lot of blood and tears in the middle, the team will understand 100% and find a way to solve it, but it is inevitable to complain that every day there are unexpected events. During the session, I felt frightened and felt like my heart was about to stop.

: Now that fragmented information has exploded, has the team ever thought that Sanlian already has a certain reputation and article open rate, which can appropriately reduce the complexity of article polishing and improve the “input-output ratio”?

Shen Yichao: Indeed, many platforms with huge fan bases are more like a "publishing channel". It seems that a good title will allow people to open the article and the reading volume can reach the target.

However, the brand side likes and trusts Sanlian, and the reason for choosing to cooperate with us is not just because they are familiar with this media brand and value this channel. What they value is, after all, the ability and quality of content creation.

Adhere to the method of writing original and in-depth manuscripts to write commercial content, and align the three aspects of commerciality, publicity, and readability.

The trend of short video content is coming, but it can't be replaced with deep image text. One of the world's development trends that has been widely mentioned recently is "increased uncertainty". The more variable the social environment, the more valuable the existence of in-depth content. We are in it, and we need to think, recognize, understand these changes, and then make decisions.

Quoting a sentence written by Mr. Li Honggu - "The content production direction of weekly magazines is that the heavier the weight, the lighter the light." There will always be someone who wants to think deeply and constantly understand the world, so give him heavy" things.

To improve production efficiency, the so-called higher input-output ratio, can be achieved by more reasonable overall planning and fine division of labor. If the commercial content team is likened to a workshop, our "pipeline" has become very mature, from the cooperation process, manuscript style type to author team building, etc.

: What is your personal experience like? Are you satisfied with your current job status?

Shen Yichao: In retrospect, my work has always been "vertical". I graduated from Fudan University with an undergraduate major in English. Because I like journalism, I majored in journalism as a graduate student. After graduating in 2014, self-media dividends are flourishing. , both content and marketing. There is a wide range of topics in the lifestyle field, and I have accumulated a lot of knowledge and skills in this work experience.

The only new attempt was to go to a medium-sized company in the Internet industry to try to do brand public relations after working in the previous media for more than four years. I want to go to the booming Internet and experience the perspectives of Party A and Party B. However, after half a year, I still returned to the media industry, because I felt "bored". I liked the state of constantly listening to new stories and telling stories to others. However, as a publicist, the brand stories I learned would be relatively simple. . It might be a good job, but it didn't give me the mental stimulation and fulfillment I wanted.

: In the future, what other things do you want to try and achieve?

Shen Yichao: Actually, I thought about this issue very seriously, but found that I am very satisfied with the status quo, and there is really nothing else I really want to do.

The atmosphere of the three connections is very open and free. There are no strict systems and no repressive rules. Leaders are guided by the goal of "writing good content". Colleagues can empathize and understand each other, just like "revolutionary comrades in arms". I have never experienced the workplace environment of "one person has 800 hearts and minds".

Many media people will choose to start a business. However, I have no business mind. In my concept, a "content person" and a "business person" like me may be two animals.

Attached: The "popular soft article" with a good response from the triplet

"The world can't go back, how to adapt and live your own life? 》

"The years are never peaceful, there will always be someone shining"